Mount Mostly-Closed

At the top of a Cascade mountain no sensible mapmaker has ever labeled correctly, four friends live in the trees, play golf with volcanic rocks, and do their best to remain undiscovered. Milo is a lost human with one good boot, too many opinions, and a deep suspicion of official paperwork. Bongo is an enormous, gentle ape whose faith in pancakes borders on spiritual. Gus is a polite Bigfoot with impeccable manners and a talent for apologizing to mushrooms. And Tippy-a chimpanzee with broken sunglasses and a clipboard-has appointed himself management, despite no one asking for management and several people actively objecting. Together, they have built Mount Mostly-Closed Golf Club: a treetop course of rope bridges, soup-can holes, questionable safety practices, and lava lumps hit with sticks. It is paradise. It is absurd. It is almost certainly illegal. Then the outside world starts measuring the mountain. Orange survey tape appears on the lower trail. A mysterious government pamphlet insists Bigfoot does not exist. Hikers stumble into the middle of the annual Lava Lump Invitational. Aliens arrive with emotionally complicated snacks. Rangers begin asking questions. And somewhere below the branches, a file marked UNVERIFIED RIDGE ACTIVITY opens on a desk. For Milo, Gus, Bongo, and Tippy, the danger is no longer falling off a platform, losing a tournament, or accidentally eating interstellar refreshments. The danger is being found, categorized, explained, and removed from the only home they have ever truly chosen. To save Mount Mostly-Closed, they will need courage, friendship, pancakes, bad rules, worse golf, and possibly handrails. Whimsical, hilarious, and unexpectedly tender, Mount Mostly-Closed is a comic fantasy eco-fable about chosen family, bureaucratic…