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Mount Washington Observatory tales and weather humor for all ages

Welcome to the website of New Hampshire author Eric Pinder. Please visit the annotated sitemap to find a complete list of books, interviews, humorous essays, photographs, recommended reading, travel tips and more.

Enjoy stories from the Mount Washington Observatory, the icy outpost where Eric lived and worked for seven years. His experiences on the foggy, windswept summit inspired several books, including his first children’s book, Cat in the Clouds.

Weather aficionados can debate the merits of Celsius vs Fahrenheit, find out what ice storms and The Electric Company have in common, groan at some bad puns, read about the childhood of legendary TV meteorologist Don Kent and test their meteorological know-how with a fun but deceptively easy quiz.

News & Upcoming Events: Read Eric’s new essay about living in snow country in the latest issue of New Hampshire HOME magazine. Eric will share stories from Mount Washington and sign books at the Gilford (NH) Public Library at 6:30 pm on February 4, at Toadstool Books in Milford from 11-1 on February 6, and at the Richardson Memorial Library in Sugar Hill NH at 6:30 pm on February 11.

Katahdin’s Knife Edge

Author Gary Nahban calls nature writing “going out into the boonies and interviewing plants” in the excellent (and sadly out of print) anthology Words from the Land. See this annotated list of the top ten nature writing books, and find out why you shouldn’t read Walden until you’re 30. Eric Pinder’s book of nature writing, North to Katahdin, follows Thoreau’s footsteps to ask the question, “Why do we like to hike?”

Nature writing about mountains & weather, from New England to Antarctica

Speaking of nature writing, J.R.R. Tolkien spent so much time describing trees and mushrooms that he could have called his epic A Hiker’s Guide to the Shire. Click here for

Cycling’s Greatest Misadventures and other anthologies

Eric Pinder’s reviews and musings about books that inspired or intrigued him. It’s an eccentric list ranging from Tolkien to Ken Grimwood’s fascinating novel Replay to The Winds of War.

Volcanoes, geysers and glaciers await travelers to Iceland (and don’t forget to try the rotten shark). For icy adventures closer to home, read Into Deep Slush, an excerpt from Tying Down the Wind. Discover what happens when you make high-altitude pizza right before an alpine search-and-rescue operation. Climb above timberline into the realm of Pamola, who once terrified Henry David Thoreau, and revisit the “forever wild” setting of Donn Fendler’s classic children’s book Lost on a Mountain in Maine.

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Text and photographs © Eric Pinder