I’ve been meaning to drop my kayak in and do a little exploring for potential project sites. Unfortunately, it somehow got flipped over from its storage and is now full of a few hundred pounds of ice and snow. While I wait out a prolonged thaw, I figured I’d have to search elsewhere for inspiration and updates. I’ve been researching a lot of locations and I have about 25% of the locations roughly mapped out- if you’re a backer or a follower who has sent me leads, thank you! These are highly susceptible to change though. What I’m focused on at the moment is connecting these places. The word of the day continues to be JOURNEY. At its most basic level, we have a project about connecting to place here within the watershed, but I keep coming back to this idea of connecting ACROSS places.
In real project terms, it brings up the question of just how deep to dive. Check out this map of the Potomac, for example (the river I know the best, but still…so much water). Just sticking to the main stem, I marked 11 locations on the map to draw from. Some are personally significant, some broader. As the crow flies, it’s ~200-250 miles from the mouth in Southern Maryland to the headwaters in West Virginia. Now granted, we’re talking about a historically important river which hits 3 different states plus DC. But I could just as easily add another dozen locations I want to hit on and off of this river alone.
All of this is just to speak to the really unique potential of this project. Which I hope is one of the reasons you chose to back it (or are thinking about backing it!). In my next update, I’ll hopefully be able to share another map (and probably the changes to this one), along with some more technical info about the creation process itself. Please continue to spread the word!