Scott Rosin

Scott Rosin grew up in Redondo Beach, California, in the Fifties and Sixties when it was a sleepy beach town. At age 11, he survived a near-fatal illness that lasted most of 1959. Besides keeping him bedridden during a long recovery, the illness afforded him an opportunity to read a year's worth of classical and modern literature--Homeric sagas, Norse and Greek mythology, Renaissance poets, Dumas, Dickens, Twain, Steinbeck, Hemingway, and McCullers, and poets Cummings, Ferlinghetti, and Marquis.

Rosin's brush with mortality left him with a lifelong habit of embracing challenges. In the summer of 1960, he began surfing. In 1971, he left the crowded So-Cal burbs and beaches. For the next 42 years, he surfed the less crowded waves of Oregon’s Central Coast.

He fell in love with the forests of the Pacific Northwest. As he puts it, "I always loved the woods as much as the ocean. Anything to do with trees. I fought wildfire, became a smokejumper, worked as a faller, tree planter, and logger, and for the last 27 years of my working life owned a tree-service business. If it had anything to do with manual labor, timber, or lower back pain, I've done it."

Rosin’s fascination with words pushed him to write. He joined a community theatre group in Newport, OR, where five of his plays were produced. He was also co-author of the lyrics for a full-length musical based on “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry. Some of his firefighting poems were published in “Wildland Firefighter Magazine” in the Nineties, and some of his surf poems appeared in “Pacific Longboard Magazine” during that time period. "Smokey and Kit," one of his longer narrative poems, was originally published in Chris Bystrom's seminal “The Glide, the Renaissance of LongBoard Surfing.”

Rosin now lives on his working tree farm high in the Oregon Coast Range.