Intro, or I Love Geography.

So, I've long considered starting a blog. But I often find that if I have the time to make a blog I'm not doing anything worth talking about. On the other hand, participating in fun activities becomes a substitute for finding something interesting to say. However, some blogs are project based. Here is something cool, crazy, creative, etc that someone is working on and they want to share their experiences with everyone.

This blog will be of the later sort. I have a project that I have been working on for some time and only now thought I would share with everyone. I find it terribly interesting, but for some (most?) it will seem terribly boring. Tedious even. Utterly without reward. Perhaps I am starting this blog to find that special niche audience that may find interest in my little project.

Speaking of which, what is this project I am working on? Well, I'm glad you asked. I'm mapping the entire Columbia River basin. Huh? Still have questions? Well, let me elucidate. The story begins in my freshman year at college. Actually, I could say it goes even further back to middle school. So let's take a quick detour. This will explain a little about me, why I've taken on this project, and what else makes me a Geek.

I first became introduced to the epic fantasy genre of books the same way most of us are, through J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. While I, too, love much of the book because of it's character's, plots, dilemmas, and so forth, I also loved the world itself. With its mountains, rivers, villages, kingdoms all clearly named and labeled on a friendly map. I'm not sure if my love sprung from this, but I definitely recognized it here. But it wasn't just Middle Earth that had maps that fascinated me. Our home copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica had plenty of maps of the US, Germany, China, Somalia, et al. I love looking through Atlases and spinning a globe. And it's physical maps that I love specifically. Political maps, with their solid colors just defining these arbitrary lines we call borders doesn't thrill me at all. It's seeing all those mountains with their passes. Rivers that begin in glaciers and find their way to the sea. It's seeing how a large city is situated among the features of the landscape. How human civilization has been shaped by the land and how the land has been shaped by civilization.

Now, back to college. That is where I was introduced to Keyhole. For those of you unfamiliar with this program, it stitched together satellite images of the world. You could punch in some latitude and longitude and instantly see what it looked like from space. Great for looking at the roof of your house (is that Frisbee really still up there?) or seeing how things have changed in your old neighborhood.

Not to get into a history lesson, but Keyhole was later bought by Google and turned into Google Earth. My.favorite.program.ever. Now I can fully explore any place on Earth. And with the advancements that have been made to Google Earth over the past decade or so, I find it still more fascinating and more difficult to turn off.

I don't remember the precise catalyst, but I conceived the notion of mapping the entire basin of the Columbia River in Google Earth. I started the project some time ago, so this blog will be a mix of what I find of interest as I progress through the wild country of the Pacific Northwest. But I will also delve back into territory I have already covered to get you up to speed. At this point I have finished the entire state of Oregon, but that is still a fraction of the entire work.

Next time, I will explain less about me and more about geography and the Columbia River Basin itself.

Happy hunting,
Brett