Here’s Echo Creek, a tributary that joins the Bow River in Banff. You can hire canoes and kayaks here (for a price), or if you’re lucky, other people will do the hiring and then line up for you on the river while a train is passing in front of them, with rugged mountains in the background, all beautifully framed by trees.
I was in Banff for a week on a summer school in climate engineering with a crew of graduate students, faculty and other experts in social, political and scientific issues around geoengineering (or climate engineering). We gathered to ask (answering is more difficult), with great humility and no small amount of trepidation, difficult questions and challenges around if, when and how this such technologies should be used, and to ruminate over the possible need for them as mitigation of climate gases does not proceed nearly fast enough to steer us away from a host of dangerous climatic consequences.
Even the considerable weight of these issues, however, could not dampen the delight of staying for a week in Banff National Park. Fortunately I did have some time for sightseeing. You could scarcely imagine a more beautiful setting for a town, along the Bow River, among tall and imposing peaks. Here’s a view of downtown Banff with Cascade Mountain in the background.
If you’ve been following my posts from the last few days, you may have discerned that I’ve been posting panorama pictures I took long ago. I’ve just recently stitched these together.
Here’s idyllic South Haven, on the shores of Lake Michigan. It’s nice to go there and lounge on the beach for a day, even if the water temperature doesn’t quite reach the same levels as in the Mexican Gulf.
A view of the Ottawa River from behind Parliament, with Gatineau (Quebec) on the far side of the river. In the left part of the picture, on the bluff over the river, sits the Supreme Court of Canada (white building).
It’s summer, it’s Saturday, it’s the farmers’ market in St Catharines. This day there was also a classic car show downtown, so there was even more people than normal. We had tacos (authentic stuff, not texmex) for breakfast and ice cream for dessert (home made lavender ice cream for me). We like going here to eat good food and browse (and sometimes buy) interesting cheeses and breads. We’re starting to know the people that sell cheese paninis out of a trailer (eight-ten different varieties of cheese in one sandwich — yum!). We like cheese.
Here’s a panorama of Missoula, the second largest city in Montana and home of the University of Montana. I was there for a three day workshop on the ethics of geoengineering in October, 2010. Though there was not much time for getting around and seeing the wonderful nature of Montana and the hues of autumn, I did manage to climb the hill of the valley to get this panorama of the city. I’d like to go back to Montana, to walk under majestic Ponderosa pines and take in their vanilla fragrance. And, of course, I want to see Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. Next time.
To get the ‘panorama experience’, click the Quicktime link below — try the zoom!
Øyvind, my brother, and I in the first digital picture that exists of either of us — Øyvind was just a toddler and I was wearing my favourite trousers (basically overalls). The picture was taken at a multimedia expo my parents took us to when I was little, in 1993. I loved going to expos — they were mind-blowingly huge, with megatonnes of things to explore and free stuff (pens, stickers, lanyards, etc) to be acquired. It was a boy’s dream. We went to several expos when I was that age; car expos, home expos, hobby expos. This picture became a souvenir from one such expo, printed out and given to me. I have now redigitalized it. As you can see, the quality is not great, so I would guess the camera produced pictures in the 400×300 pixels range only. It was the early days of consumer-grade digital imagery.
I took this picture an afternoon last year. Dark and cloudy conditions in the evening made it very difficult to get a sharp picture, considering I relied on three magnification filters to get this close, significantly reducing the amount of light that reached the lens. Some post-capture sharpening makes the quality acceptable.
If you were making a shortlist of idyllic places, you could do worse than including the small village of Holmsbu, sitting in a rural and forested location almost at the tip of the Hurum peninsula. On our way to visit my sister Cecilie and her boyfriend during our trip to Norway last year, I took Jenna on a detour around the Hurum peninsula. We stopped at this exquisitely preserved example of a Norwegian sea-side village, replete with white-painted wooden houses. Today, of course, modernity and money has imported at marina for pleasure craft in the foreground, and monied classes from the larger cities not far away occupy many of houses during the summer season, where once lived fishermen and their families. It’s a lovely place to stop for a bit, have a walk and enjoy the sights.
Looking at our pictures from Norway/Paris last year, you’d think I wasn’t there. This is one of two or three pictures from the entire trip, taken in Holmsbu, a rural little village by the Drammensfjord. More in another post.
Helios wanted to go out and sniff the and the signs of spring (crocuses started sprouting in the flower beds on the first of March) and celebrate the good weather. Well, he didn’t really want to go outside, but he’s getting more used to it. We didn’t stay out long, though, it was still below zero and the little guy isn’t mentally prepared for it . But before he went inside to the safety and warmth of his prison, he got to explore the bushes.
And here is evidence that spring really is here:
