Sean Patrick Hill is a freelance writer, poet, and teacher who has spent many weekends and summers exploring the best of Oregon’s mountains, deserts, and coastlines. Born and raised in upstate New York, Hill moved to Oregon after graduating from the University of Buffalo. He lived in Eugene, Bend, and then Portland, graduating with a master’s in writing from Portland State. For two summers he worked with the Oregon Youth Conservation Corps, leading teenage crews into the Cascade Mountains to do everything from maintaining trails to building bridges to counting frogs. Later, as an AmeriCorps volunteer, he organized tree plantings in local parks, clean-ups of riverside environments, and field trips into the wilderness for high school students.

Hill has written outdoor travel articles for The Oregonian, The Source Weekly, Columbia Gorge Magazine, and Oregon Coast. His poetry appears widely in online and print journals, and his first book of poems, The Imagined Fields, will be published this year.

Scott Leonard spent his childhood summers and falls fishing, skiing, and hunting in the Oregon outdoors. He began hiking and backpacking when he started college at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma. He fell in love with the wilderness areas of Washington—and has never grown tired of pounding out miles of trail.

After college, Scott spent several years building and maintaining trails, and teaching others to do the same. He spent a year researching and hiking for Moon Washington Hiking, and yet another summer on Moon Take a Hike Seattle—never has a job been so easy to get up for each morning.

In addition to writing, Scott works as an attorney in Portland, Oregon, where he has a successful criminal defense practice.