Memory: Maine, Midwinter

Spring is here, days are brighter and warmer, and yet I found myself recently thinking back to a midwinter week-end in the early 1980'’s when I was a college student in Maine.

A group of us from Colby College took a week-end trip from Waterville, on the Kennebec River in central Maine, to Kezar Lake, in the west of the state. We held a gathering at the summer cottage of one of our classmates.

I don'’t recall whether there was much snow on the ground, though there must have been some. I do know that the lake was well-frozen; the experience that has stayed with me was out on the ice in a deep, dark night.

We arrived in the evening, made food, ate, then went for a night-time wander around the mostly empty summer cottage community.

We walked among scattered cottages to a small community center.

We played a loose game of bowling on the single lane in the community center. I remember that bowling lane as an alley of sharp white pine, with pins at one end and a ball at the other. We set the pins by hand, then stood back as Mark, the best bowler among us, rolled strikes. The echoing rumble and crash, surrounded by winter quiet, was wonderful.

We walked back on the lake. The ice was irregular and ridged, with snow banks and drifts. Several of us carried large-battery flashlights. It felt to me, a relative southerner, like an arctic expedition.

As we neared the wooded shoreline, we stumbled over a snowdrift and onto a cleared, level ring of smooth ice that someone had groomed for skating. In our boots and heavy coats, taken by surprise, we slipped and stumbled. Someone dropped a flashlight that spun across the ice, its beam flashing crazy patterns through our group.

Someone, I think it was Laur, lay sprawled in the center of the ring on her back, looking up.

"“Whoa! Guys, check this out!"”

We joined her. Lying on that flat ice, looking up, I didn't see trees or horizon or other folks. I saw sky. Clear, deep, star-filled sky.

Suddenly, the ice at my back felt ever so slightly curved. Just for a moment, I sensed the motion of the planet through that starry blackness.

I knew, of course, about planets and orbits and the universe. But it was that night on the ice in Maine that I understood at a deeper level that I am on the surface of a ball of earth and water moving through space.

That comes back to me now and again, whatever the season, whatever the weather.

It's good to remember where you are.

I Hope the General Assembly Passes This Legislation

My State Senator, Gary Simpson, has introduced a bill to name a local nature preserve after an old friend. Senate Bill 268 would name a nature preserve of 599 acres on Angola Neck the "Til Purnell Nature Preserve" to honor a woman I've known for almost as long as I've lived in Delaware.

I have shared in the past my great respect for Til and for her husband Skipper. I think that this act by the legislature would be a fitting tribute.

I was interested to see that Senate Bill 268 quotes (apparently verbatim) the Cape Gazette article about Til that I linked to in my post about her in July of 2005. I don't know that I've ever seen a bill that is mostly text from a newspaper story.

Unusual, but I think it works in this context.

Some of What We Found at the Botanical Gardens

I got a few decent shots from my brief wander through the Botanical Gardens in Washington DC the other day. I put 13 of them together into a Flickr Set.

I'm particularly proud of this one. I need my friend Sandy to explain to me just what flowers these are, though, before I can add that information here.

Update: Sandy tells me that this is one of the Phalaenopsis genus of orchids.

Here's an Idea I'd Like Delaware to Consider

In New York, it looks like drivers of low-emission, clean, fuel efficient cars are going to get a discount on tolls. A story on timesunion.com ( Green' cars worth greenbacks on Thruway) says that the state of New York will issue Green Transponders to cars that meet certain efficiency standards and that those transponders will mean discounts on tolls on the New York Thruway. My Prius and I would like that idea to spread.

Traveling

I've been on the road a lot lately, and I'm just about to head out again. I've had little time for blogging, I'm afraid.

This past week I was at a conference of the National States Geographic Information Council, NSGIC, in Annapolis. This is a group that meets all day and into the evening, with few breaks and little time to play on-line. Exhausting.

We spent much of Wednesday in Washington DC, where we hosted a legislative breakfast of national groups interested in the use of Geospatial data. Several of us visited our Congressional delegations to talk about policy issues related to geospatial data.

My friend Sandy Schenck, of the Delaware Geological Survey, and I had a quick meeting with a staff member in Senator Carper's office. We also had a little time to wander around Capitol Hill.


It was a very cold, but pretty, day. I took several shots of the Capitol and some of other sites around that area. Several colleagues and I wandered through the National Botanical Gardens, a green-house complex just across the way from the Capitol. I have a few shots from that visit that I still need to crop, balance and post.

Soon, I hope.

For now, Karen and the girls and I are headed south to Virginia for the evening for a birthday party for Karen's uncle.

Springtime?

This was our tree yesterday, starting to blossom. Spring started this afternoon, though there's snow and cold rain in the forecast tonight.

The tree started to pop early, fooled by an over-warm stretch a week or so back. Now we're cold again.

I hope things settle down soon.

More Bragging

Sorry. Can't be helped.

I had great fun earlier this week learning a new software plug-in to the GIS software we use at work. It lets me export some of the geospatial data we publish at the Office of State Planning Coordination to a format that opens using the free Google Earth browser.

I have posted Google Earth versions of the Delaware Municipal Boundaries, the State Strategies, and the PLUS Project areas.

It really doesn't take much to make me happy.

Out Cedar Neck

This morning was dry and crisply clear, though windy. I took a detour out Slaughter Neck to Slaughter Beach, and then back to the highway by way of Cedar Neck. This was another part of my on-going "east of Route 1" photo project.

I found shipping out in the Bay off the mouth of the Mispillion River. I found unique signage in Slaughter Beach. I think I took a photo of the Mispillion Light.

The church above was on the way back in, just before I got to the highway east of Milford. There was something about the tree, the simple small church building, and the white picket fence that called to my camera.

Things Change. Fast.

The moon is just past full tonight. I noticed this as I was driving Colleen back from her dance class.

I realized that is was exactly a month ago that I was rolling along those same roads enjoying the moon shine on newly fallen snow.

Tonight, the moon was shining through not-quite bare tree branches and onto snow-free fields. The temperature, even after dark, was still in the low 70's and the trees are starting to show buds.

It's only been a month, but at this time of the year the weather changes fast.

Bragging: On Mapping

I've always wanted to mess around with Google Maps and create my own little mash-up. This week-end, I finally made a start, albeit a modest one.

For some years now, I've been running a small web site for the Rehoboth Summer Children's Theatre, a non-profit theater company that produces hilarious two-person children's plays, usually based on classic fairy tales.

This week-end I started putting together the 2006 edition of the Theatre's web site. Today I had some time to register the site to use the Google API and start trying to add a map of the Theatre performance locations. I read through the documentation, explored several tutorial sites, sweated through false-starts and errors and came up with what I think is a neat little map, integrated into the Theatre Site page.

I'm terribly pleased with myself. Now that the ice is broken, I'll have to think of some other fun maps to add.