Our new Red Blooded FIELD NOTES are still available, and they’re NOT a limited edition, so they’ll always be waiting for you. But if you need ‘em in time for Valentine’s Day, and if you want a romantic pencil to go with it, you should order quickly. We offer various shipping options (including our Chicago will-call window) but if you order today (Wednesday, February 8, 2012) you should get ‘em in time at our cheapest shipping rate.

We’ll include one free “FIELD NOTES loves you” pencil with every 3-Pack of Red Blooded notebooks, while supplies last.

We’ve added the hand-letterpressed “Red Blooded” graph paper memo books to our standard line up, just in time for Valentine’s Day. And of course, we made a little film about them. Get some for your main squeeze.

3-Packs of our Winter Limited Release, The Northerly Edition, are all sold out. Thanks everyone. You can still get these snowy white and silver beauties as a part of a COLORS Subscription. Sign up now and you’ll get “Northerlies” right away and you’ll also get our next three seasonal editions as they are released. Trust us, you are going to want Spring. Oh yes you are. And Summer. Oh boy, if we can pull off what we have planned…

We were in New York City last week and Paris this week, showing our little notebooks at the fabulous Capsule Show. We met a bunch of really cool people, added some great new retailers and said hi to some of the fine folks that currently carry our books in their shops. We’d like to give a shout out to BPMW, the people who put on the show, it’s always a blast and always top notch, so thanks for letting us be a part of it! We’ll be in the Las Vegas edition next month there, stop by and say hi!

FIELD NOTES COLORS seasonal 3-Packs are sold in limited quantities and they have a tendency to sell out almost immediately after they’re announced on our email list (sign up at the top of the left column!). With that in mind, we’ve introduced a subscription model, giving those who want first crack at each of our limited-edition releases (and who didn’t want to camp out in front of a browser, hitting refresh) a simple method to guarantee delivery of a year’s worth of new COLORS as they’re released.

Start your COLORS subscription right now with “The Northerly Edition” and you’ll be all set for Spring. And you’re going to want Spring. Oh yes you will.

Thanks to your amazing support of FIELD NOTES, we’ve done very little advertising. When we do, it’s generally sparked by the desire to support a publication or site we love. That’s the case again as this ad appears in the forthcoming (and highly-anticipated) issue 6 of The Ride Journal. The Ride is a beautifully-designed magazine full of great writing and photography, covering the many disciplines of cycling, all around the world. It’s the rare sort of magazine that you’d want to put in a safe plastic sleeve and hide from your friends, but you just can’t stand not to read and share it. We’re excited to be a small part of it, and we’re carefully watching Facebook for details on Issue 6′s release.

Jace Mullen was at a Secret Santa party in San Diego. One friend got Field Notes. One friend got mustaches. The rest is history. Could this be our next COLORS edition? The answer is “nope!” But it’s still glorious.

We’ve pushed up the release date of the thirteenth in our series of quarterly, limited editions of our memo books in seasonal colors and styles by a couple of weeks. We were caught a bit off guard when our fall release sold out so quickly and we wanted to make sure there would be plenty of time for you to give these new ones as holiday gifts. The winter release is “The Northerly Edition” and it’s unlike any version we’ve made so far and it’s available to order right now in 3-packs and as part of a COLORS subscription.

Thanks to James White of Signalnoise for the lovely photo above. BTW: James is a bit of a collector.

New. Field Notes Films.

Located in Oconto County, Wisconsin in the Chequamego-Nicolet National Forest, just two miles from the community of Mountain (pop. 860) and just off Forest Road 2106, the Mountain Fire Lookout Tower rises 93 feet, well above a tree line crowded with pines, oak, and maples. The Model LS-40 tower was built in Chicago in 1932 by the Aermotor Company, and was erected by the Wisconsin Conservation Commission, first several miles east-southeast in far more isolated location reachable only by foot trail, and then disassembled by the CCC and moved closer to service roads in 1935.

In use for nearly forty years, from May through September of each year a trained fire spotter would live at the site, spending every daylight hour up in the cab keeping watch for smoke, reporting possible fires via phone to a central Northern Wisconsin fire suppression station. At one time rich with thick forests, which in turn created a massive lumber industry, the area was prone to raging fires like the 1871 Great Peshtigo Fire which resulted in thousands of deaths, twelve completely decimated towns, and millions of scorched acres. Incidents such as these created a dire need for towers like the Mountain Fire Lookout.

Originally surrounded by small living quarters, a latrine, and storage sheds, the tower itself is now all that is left on the site. The last fire called occurred on April 25th, 1970, and it is one of only 2 remaining towers from the original 19 that were built in the immediate area. After its decommission, it served briefly as a radio antenna/relay for local ambulance and law enforcement services. Between 1993 and 1994 the site was rehabilitated and converted into a public site. The Mountain Fire Lookout Tower was entered into the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.

Further Reading/Information:
Mountain Fire Lookout Tower, Nat’l Register of Historic Places (pdf)
Norman Maclean’s incomparable Young Men and Fire
Philip Connors’ Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout
Lookout Info from the History of Architecture of the USDA Forest Service
The Forest Service Lookout Cookbook
Collection of Former Fire Lookout Sites
Fire Tower Blueprints
General National Resource
Adopt a Lookout
How To Use of the Osborne Fire Finder