Up in the Air, Down on the Ground

Once Ed saw the photos of the project to photograph all of the California coastline and put them on the Web, he’s been thinking about doing the same for Point Roberts. Now that the Point is once again threatened by development, it seemed even more important to get that project done so there would be a record of what it looked like right now, not yet built out, not yet a destination, still a funny little exclave, 'a spit of land dangling below the 49th parallel from the mainland of British Columbia’ as the Seattle Times described it this past week. Still not that far away from a hundred years ago when settlement by Americans was first authorized.

The California project went on for a long time, of course, but so did the Point Roberts project what for one reason or another. The helicopter wasn’t available, the photographer wasn’t available, the right camera wasn’t at hand, the weather wasn’t cooperative. I was the reasonable photographer for this project (even though Ed’s a better photographer than I am), because Ed has to fly the helicopter. But I don’t like flying in helicopters because of the noise and because I just don’t (no reason needed, in my view). Furthermore, my digital camera doesn’t have image stabilization and any pictures I took in a moving helicopter would be of dubious quality.

So we needed to find someone who wanted to fly, was available to fly on short notice, and had a fancier digital camera than I did. And we needed the helicopter to be available. Last Thursday, everything came together at once because the adventurous 18-year-old granddaughter was here with her fancy camera at the same time that the helicopter was available and the weather was beautiful. And now the Point Roberts Coastline Project is up on the web for the world to see at ross-park.net/prcoast/

In some ways, these pictures show the reality of Point Roberts better than any words I could ever write. But in others, my words and Ed’s and Gianna’s pictures go together perfectly to illustrate The Whole Picture that I had in mind when I first started this blog, seven months ago. Enjoy!