... i was wrong ...
... okay, i suppose i can allow myself a bit of slack and say, "maybe i wasn't right, but i was pretty darn close" ...
... after staring at my journal entry for about a half-hour, examining over and over the then/now pictures of me near portage glacier, i took all the images into photoshop and began a detailed investigation ...
... first thing i did was to backtrack and erase any of my first impression ideas that the triangle-shaped mountain liz and adrien and i stood in front of was, indeed, the same as that pictured in the 1960 photograph ... emotional content, that was very, very difficult to do ...
... i then revisited closely the 1960 picture ... my "favor the left foot" observation was correct, but i wouldn't be surprised if one of you had already noticed much clearer content evidence the photo had been reversed ... want a hint ... hmmm, well, i suppose it's fair to say i probably shoot with passable accuracy with either hand, but there's no way i'd survive a gun duel having had to draw from my left side ... pop gun's hammer is to the front in the picture, too, further proof that it was on my right hip and thus the picture had been reversed ... (yes, you're correct, hair part line is also a clue) ...
... realizing that my on-the-spot impressions had been less than scientific, i finally admitted that i really couldn't legitimately match the skylines in the two photographs ... then, in a moment of inspiration (as usual the offspring of frustration and motivation), i realized i could quite easily return to the glacier valley ... nah, no private jet for me ... "google earth," there you go ...
... after exploring the terrain map several times, i determined that, indeed, i was incorrect in my first impression ... a second light bulb popped in my head, and i went to google and searched for an image of the "portage glacier retreat" ...
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U.S. FOREST SERVICE
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... since i knew we had picnicked regularly within a mile or less of the edge of the glacier during the years 1958-1962, examining these maps gave me an approximate starting point for my search ... i went to google earth to get an idea of the terrain (the yellow pin comes later in this story) ...
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| GOOGLE EARTH |
... using these maps i decided that our picnics had taken place about 1/2-way from the current eastern edge of the glacier (up in the photo, just above the red dot) and the modern visitor center (off the bottom edge of the picture) ... once i'd zoomed in as close as the program allows, i entered the "ground level view" mode ... here, of course, i instantly wished i'd had a super-duper zillion gigahertz macintosh and the equivalent internet connection speed ... once my machine had rendered enough for me to move around, one glance at the triangle-shaped mountain behind me in the 1960 picture reinforced my new determination that no matter how much i desired it just could not be matched to a mountain which it only superficially resembles ... again, me, my girls, excitement in the air, an understandable error, i think ...
... going back to the center of the valley, still in ground level view, i started to think a bit ... i set google earth for the overhead view and looked down into the landscape ... i immediately said to myself, "in order for us to get to the center of the valley in 1960 there had to have been a road someplace, and it can't have been the modern route because that would've run right into the glacier" ... a bit more thinking ... "that old road couldn't have been in the center of the valley, there would've been too much glacial outwash and seasonal flooding" ... think-think-think ... ah, yes, in 1960 the railroad tracks would have been pretty much in the same location, tucked along the southern flanks of the mountains on the north side of the valley ... sure enough, even without a photo reconnaissance interpreter license, i found traces of a highway ... faint, but there ...
... the angle, too sharp, it can't be an abandoned and overgrown roadbed for trains ...
... going back to the center of the valley, still in ground level view, i started to think a bit ... i set google earth for the overhead view and looked down into the landscape ... i immediately said to myself, "in order for us to get to the center of the valley in 1960 there had to have been a road someplace, and it can't have been the modern route because that would've run right into the glacier" ... a bit more thinking ... "that old road couldn't have been in the center of the valley, there would've been too much glacial outwash and seasonal flooding" ... think-think-think ... ah, yes, in 1960 the railroad tracks would have been pretty much in the same location, tucked along the southern flanks of the mountains on the north side of the valley ... sure enough, even without a photo reconnaissance interpreter license, i found traces of a highway ... faint, but there ...
... the angle, too sharp, it can't be an abandoned and overgrown roadbed for trains ...
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| GOOGLE EARTH |
... having the line where i thought the picture had been taken, i once again i went to the ground and began to wander around the valley ... i was perhaps five minutes before a casual rotational sweep of my view and i spotted the prize ...
... could this be it ... ??? ... there was only one way to find out ...
... portage valley today ...
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GOOGLE EARTH
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... portage valley today ...
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| U.S. FOREST SERVICE |
... little patrick, in the middle of the same valley, 1960 ...
... looking at the photograph i realized how i had been fooled by the perspective ... a quick search of my memory and i remembered that pa had a telephoto lens for the argus c3 with which he (and many others) had a kind of photographic love/hate relationship ...
... i added it all up, combined it all into a layered photoshop document, set the image of me in 1960 to 80% transparency, then, after a bit of experimenting with the scaling, i was there ...
... (honest, i almost think this deserves a drum roll) ...
SPRING, MOST LIKELY 1960
60°47'39.02"N/148°53'1.36"W
... as near as i can figure, my "circular error of probability" is probably less than a few hundred feet ... close, so very remarkably close ...
... to the best of google earth's capabilities, this is what dad saw that day in 1960 when he managed to get his little son to stand still for a minute so he could snap a picture of him in front of portage glacier ...
... and now it's one in the morning and i'm crying, but it's okay because somehow, someway, right now the little boy can see his dad with a camera in his hand, and he's so very, very happy because he knows he's got the best pa in the whole wide world ...