Thoughts - Why Islands?
My first island was located outside of Mission Bay Amusement Park in a bay across the street. I think the swimming area was called Bonita Basin (or something similar). About 30-meters from the shore was this small circular sand island covered with very low scrub brush. I would wade out to the island until I had only about 10-meters worth of frantic swimming to do. That island was great. When I was on it, I felt like I was King of the World. Nothing could get to me on that island.
There were other islands, most of them real - a small mud island in the San Diego River, the Coronado Islands which I nicknamed the Buffaloes, and Shelter Island which is not really an island, but an artificial peninsula that juts out into San Diego Bay. There was Treasure Island made real by Wallace Berry and Jackie Cooper, Robinson Crusoe's amazing home and the Eden-like island populated by Swiss Family Robinson.
As I grew older and began to travel, I visited real islands - Buyukada in Turkey, Luzon in the Philippines. I visited Taiwan, Honshu, England, Wake Island, Oahu and Manhattan.
Lots of islands and a passion for maps has served me well my entire life. At one home I convinced my wife that a map would look nice on our bedroom wall. The map turned out to be a 12-foot by 8-foot creation. It was made up of a series of 1:250,000 series (JOG Charts) of Greece and the Greek Islands. It was beautiful!
In my Air Force job I worked with maps constantly. The more detailed, the better the map. I love quality maps for their information, their consistency and their inherent beauty. And make that map one of an island and I was in heaven.
For the past four years I have been honing my mapping skills. I have base imagery (Landsat ETM+) that depicts all of the world's islands, Google Earth and MS Live Search. I am quite proficient using both of my mapping software packages, Global Mapper and Marplot. Flickr is where I store my finished images. Blogger is home to my blogsite.
My constant challenge is to make time to map. Not to think about projects or to correct past projects, but to map new islands.
Why islands? Why not!
Islands still fascinate me. I love the process of selecting a target island, digitizing the various layers and compiling the map in Marplot.
I have been priviledged to visit a number of islands. I loved the time I spent on those islands. Now I get to map those islands and others. I enjoy the time I spend mapping islands. I feel that my completed projects help to call attention to these special places. Places that allow us to leave a busy, cluttered world behind.
