Category: Uncategorized

I’m getting in shape to climb the hills and dales by foot rather than by air.

The lady slippers are out, almost everywhere you look.

I’ve been working to improve my editing chops with a Ripple Training course on Final Cut Pro. The on-line course is excellent, my old brain, not so much. But it’s fun and sometimes you can teach and old dog new tricks.

I’m only about halfway through the course, so there is much more to come.

I’m working to get a better handle on the scenes I see from the air. As I research the rivers and their contribution to human habitation, I’ve also relearned how recently the glaciers have disappeared and the first humans arrived. We are speaking of only 15,000 to 13,000 years ago. What did the landscape look like then?

Perhaps it had a similar appearance to the upper elevations of today’s Katahdin. Once the glaciers melted away, treeless tundra and plains were left behind. Maybe it looked something like this.

It seems the first humans arrived on foot, hunting game which included the Wooly Mammoth and Mastodons. Sea levels rose and fell and the forest crept in. As of approximately 9000 years ago, the tundra and plains had given way to tree and forests, impeding the easy movement by foot. Access and life along the rivers became essential.

I finally finished the video shot during the week of February 20. The actual shooting was not framed properly, due to the offset of the camera mounted on the airplane’s strut. Music continues be a problem, finding the right tracks is a painful process.

First take on my 2022 river project. This was taken Feb 15, 2022 along the Androscoggin River between Brunswick to Lewiston Auburn. GoProing video and flying is a bit tricky even with two pilots. Once the GoPro starts filming it cuts off the video feed, so you don’t know what you have until post. Annoying!

Hope to get back in the air on Tuesday. All dependent on second pilot, weather and other possible factors. Not sure where we are heading. Possibly photos of Mt Washington or the Rangely area or perhaps some costal or river shots.

We flew up to Old Speck on Feb 9, 2022. Nice day, light winds, Old Speck looked cold and desolate. Several members of FB’s Maine Hikers climbed it the following days. Brr!

Well, at long last, I finished updating my web pages with pictures of all of Maine’s lighthouses. All except for Petit Manan, some how I skipped that one. So enjoy.

My first flight, post op, was on Dec 29, 2021. Since my medical is being held up due to the surgery, I’m flying again with CFI’s. That works well, since I can concentrate on imaging. We went out to the Camden Hills area to look at the toboggan run. Didn’t see anything worth taking pictures of, just long lines for the lift. On the way back to BXM we circled North Pond over Warren. There we found partially frozen pond with lots of springs making interesting patterns in the ice. Here are some examples.