“Proofs are in,” called a voice from the back, behind the cork board wall where copies of the month’s Astorian front pages are displayed after being brought out from the press. In a conference room window, a light flipped on.

Laid out in their earliest printed form were the 132 pages of Our Coast Magazine, stretched in sets of eight across a long wooden table. The plates, as they’re called, are a challenge to file through. One out-of-order set might contain a section front, a set of contributor photos, the fourth page of a recipe and part of a photo essay. Each plate takes two hands to set aside.

Unlike The Astorian and Coast Weekend, which are printed on-site, Our Coast is printed annually in Portland. Seeing the year’s pages laid out is the culmination of months of careful combing through digital copies. By the time proofs are in hand, every headline has been etched into memory.

For each piece of the 12th issue of Our Coast, in print this week, there is a story behind the page — an afternoon spent harvesting cedar planks and salmon fillets for recipe images, a book borrowed from a museum, a cycling trip along the Discovery Trail. Together, these stories offer a look at the elements that make this region unique. We hope you take a moment to read and savor them.