Beer, the Magic Skagit, and Tom Robbins

Over the past year, I've been moonlighting as a first-time author, researching and writing a book about local dive bars, which will be released in April. Turns out the great Skagit County novelist Tom Robbins is putting the finishing touches on a book about beer as well. His book comes out in April too. I wonder which one will sell more copies?

Anyway, a couple weeks ago, I was finishing (close to it, anyway) my book at a friend's cabin in Lake Cavanaugh, which sits in a remote thicket of forest in Skagit County. On my way home, I stopped at the Conway Tavern -- also in Skagit County -- for a celebratory BLT and beer. The Conway Tavern (it's official WSLCB-mandated name is the Conway Pub & Eatery, but nobody calls it that) always reminds me of Robbins, for a couple reasons: (1) It's the sort of warm, scruffy place he would (and probably occasionally does) appreciate, and (2) it's not all that far from his home in LaConner.

Upon returning from this mini-sabbatical, in my mail slot here on Western Ave. was a book which, of all things, happened to be about Skagit County. A product of the Skagit Land Trust, Natural Skagit makes for a gorgeous coffee table book, what with its first-rate photography and compelling historic tales of Puget Sound's most well-preserved county and the river that runs through it. But it's more than that. For one, its epilogue is penned by a Pulitzer Prize winner, former Seattle Times scribe Bill Dietrich. And the book's foreword is nothing short of naturalistic poetry. Its author: Tom Robbins, to whom the Magic Skagit obviously means the world.