On the road…again!!!
Essays, Stories, Adventures, Dreams
Chronicles of a Footloose Forester
By Dick Pellek
Decimal Geographic Coordinates, a Chronicle Update
As GPS coordinates become more important in locating lost hikers and downed airplane pilots, the Footloose Forester wanted his readers to know that decimal geographic coordinates are more convenient and easier to input into searches of online maps. Since he visited or worked in many places that did not have street addresses, he often relies on geospatial references as an aid to help the reader to visualize the wildness of some venues.
Some of most satisfying days of his life were spent on this little island
This updated chronicle repeats some information that is worth repeating, as follows:
The modern and most convenient way to locate a place on a map devised with Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) inputs is to use decimal equivalents instead of traditional Latitude and Longitude coordinates. The old school Latitude and Longitude search approach is not about to disappear from the toolbox of geographers and scientists, but even when the geographic coordinates of a site under investigation are inputted using the older system, most data is limited to Degrees °, Minutes ', and Seconds " that are tedious to input and may limit the precision of the search. The equivalent decimal coordinates that have been calculated are far more precise and can be plotted to five or six decimal points. That is to say, a map reference of the unique and unmistakable Devil’s Tower in Wyoming will get you to the general location on a paper or satellite photo map if you use Latitude and Longitude, but with decimal coordinates, it should put you on top of that monolith.
In the case of the former sites that were subsequently drowned to widen a river or to create a reservoir, the Footloose Forester did not have the original latitude and longitude data to begin with, but was able to provide useful numbers about proximate digital coordinates from Google Earth map data. Writing down and sharing that data can get anyone very close in terms of virtual reality and spatial proximity.
Using the traditional system, if you code in the coordinates N 13° 11' 48.12" and W 10° 25' 45.33", you will be zooming in to an expansive watery area in Lac Selingue in Western Mali, the reservoir where the village of Kéniekénieko once existed along the banks of the Bafing River. Another worksite previously studied for potential reservoir construction and subsequently drowned when the Caparo River in Venezuela was dammed up has the coordinates N 47° 45' 6.14" and W 71° 27' 55.45". What used to be the village of Santa Maria de Caparo in Merida Province is now underwater.
2002 Google Earth satellite map
2016 Google Earth satellite map
A final site where the Footloose Forester did some work that eventually disappeared underwater was at Warland, Montana. In that case, there are not even hints on modern maps that tiny Warland, Montana even existed. The Warland Ranger Station, the cowboy bar, and a couple of small cabins were swallowed up when the Kootenai River was backed up at the Libby Dam, 25 miles downstream. The fast flowing, glacier-fed waters of the Kootenai River widened and deepened into what is now called Lake Koocanusa, to emphasize the fact that the river originated in Canada and is now backed up beyond the US border well into Alberta, Canada.
As good as Google Earth is, not all modern satellite maps and their precedents contain information about where Warland, Montana was. One hint may be the existence of a modern bridge that crosses the lake from due west to due east. The ground view in the Street Level option of Google Earth shows a modern bridge that probably replaced the truss bridge that Footloose Forester remembers in 1958. Once or twice we young Forest Service summer employees walked across that bridge and along the 1/3 mile of dirt road to grab a beer at the cowboy bar. That was the first time he ever saw a mounted jack-a-lope on display. On the wall adjacent to the bar, a taxidermist had affixed the horns of an antelope onto the head of a jackrabbit. Some things you never forget.
After the widening of the Kootenai River upstream of Libby Dam to form the newly named Lake Koocanusa, only a map marker and approximate geospatial coordinates are the only tools that can be used to locate some former ground features.
The comparisons of coordinates may, in the future, offer options as a convenience. In one thick travel book that is not widely circulated (The Bucket List, edited by Kath Strathers in 2017), the Footloose Forester recently noticed that dozens of photographs of unique travel destinations in the book included the decimal coordinates. When he acquired his own copy of that book, his plan is to jot down decimal coordinates so that he need not search out paper maps of exotic countries in his quest to see a layout of the surrounding countryside. Technology marches on!