BEST MADE PROJECTS

Best Made Dispatch from Utah: The First Few Days

The closest I’ve come to Utah is New Mexico, where I spent 12 days hiking through Philmont Scout Ranch. And while the two states neighbor one another, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the uniqueness of the Utah desert. For the next month I’ll be living and working with the Epicenter crew in Green River, Utah. While focusing on working on design projects that benefit the community there is bound to be ample time to explore the vastness of the desert and the state and national parks surrounding Green River.

The landscape is especially beautiful. Due to flooding, the train I had planned to take from Grand Junction, CO (where I landed) to Green River, UT was not running for the day. I was forced to take the bus, which I’ll admit I wasn’t too pleased about at first. But the uncomfortableness of being packed into a 45 seat bus was soon allayed by the beauty of the scenery. The bus to Green River was the last bus to leave the station at 6.30 pm, so as we headed west we were greeted by setting sun for the majority of the trip. At one point, as we rounded a bend out of a weigh station, the whole bus fell silent. It’s an eerie feeling when everyone around you suddenly falls silent and you have no idea why. The reason became clear as I gazed out the window to my right. The entire desert was bathed in the orange light of the setting sun. Additionally, the clouds of a rainstorm far in the distance flashed with lightning. The vista closed around another bend as fast as it had appeared, and soon the bus was filled with chatter again.

Nick Zdon, leader of the Best Made Minnesota Outpost, is spending the month of August as a Frontier Fellow at Epicenter in Green River, Utah. He’ll be living and working within the small community and exploring the surrounding natural beauty of the state.

Cartographic Scale, by Bill Wetherholt, Best Made Guide to Cartography

Greetings from North Dakota: where the land is stirring and cabin fever is at an epidemic level. You can sense the change of the season in the wind, as less arctic air pours into the northern plains, and I have found myself lingering on maps as I mentally plot my next adventure. This increase in carto-lust is not absent with the rest of the gang at BMC either, nifty maps are available now! While we are dusting off old maps and snagging new ones, it felt appropriate have a brief chat about scale.

The majority of maps you will ever encounter are smaller than the reality they represent, and scale will inform you how much smaller. Scale describes the ratio of the distance on a map, globe, model, or profile to the actual distances they represent.  There are three ways in which scale can be represented in your map: with a representative fraction (1:100,000), a verbal statement (1 inch equals 4 miles), or in a graphic bar scale. For instance, if your sweet new BMC topographic map’s scale is 1:100,000, that means one unit of distance on the map is the same as 100,000 of that same unit on the surface of Earth, whether inches, centimeters, etc. And, for the record, 1 inch equals about 1.6 miles at a scale of 1:100,000 (for the math dorks: there are 63,360 inches in a mile, so 100,000/63,360 = 1.6).

Now what about the terms large-scale and small-scale? You have likely heard these terms, however, the two are commonly confused with each other. A large-scale map shows a large amount of detail over a geographically small area. A small-scale map shows a small amount of detail over a geographically large area. Think of the size of the representative fraction: a 1:24,000 scale would be large, whereas a 1:1,000,000 would be small; 1/24,000 is a much larger number than 1/1,000,000.

Finally, when considering scale, remember that a map is a generalization of reality and certain information is suppressed so your map is easy to read. A good map uses symbolization that makes sense (triangles for mountains, religious symbols for their respective houses of worship, and so forth). The smaller the scale of the map, the greater the generalization will be. Think about how much information you can communicate on a globe (small-scale) compared to a regional highway map (medium-scale) compared to a county map (large-scale). Scale directly impacts the amount of information a map can effectively convey to its audience. Anyone who has read Bill Bryson’s account of through-hiking the Appalachian Trail in A Walk in the Woods can appreciate this concept:

“I dumped my pack and searched through it for my trail map…[The maps] vary somewhat, but most are on an abysmal scale of 1:100,000, which ludicrously compresses every kilometer of real world into a mere centimeter of map.  Imagine a square kilometer of physical landscape and all that it might contain—logging roads, streams, a mountaintop or two, perhaps a fire tower, a knob or grassy bald, the wandering AT [Appalachian Trail], and maybe a pair of important side trails—and imagine trying to convey all that information on an area the size of the nail on your little finger.” (pp. 73 – 74)

So the next time you are planning your trip, remember to incorporate a map that has an appropriate scale so that you don’t run into an issue like Mr. Bryson. Don’t forget the differences between a small-scale and a large-scale map, and remember that every map is a generalization of reality no matter what the scale. Think Spring! 

Best Made Spotting: Animal Tracks

With all the snow that’s fallen this year, now is the perfect opportunity to head outside and look for tracks left by the fauna native to your area. Take a walk in one of your local neighborhood or regional parks and see what you can find. Even in urban areas it is not uncommon to find the tracks of rabbits, fox, and even deer. 

Click here to download a nice pocket guide from the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife with additional animal tracks to look for.

Trusting Your Intuition, by Rick Olson, Best Made Guide to Tour Cycling

While touring Yellowstone National Park my partner and I met a Dutch couple with decades of touring under their bottom brackets. I can’t remember their names, all I remember is the woman offering her single most important piece of advice while bike touring; trust your intuition. 

Intuition tells us not to ride back up the hill and stay the night in a fifth wheel belonging to a dubious fellow in a BLM bucket cap (His relentless efforts becoming increasingly futile upon mention of the Humboldt murderers) So we continue on our intended route, only to be waylaid moments later by a seedy older man asking if we’re OK or if we need anything. It’s not unusual for passersby to offer help in situations of obvious distress, but never had we been stopped like this. Our fully loaded bikes and current riding state indicated no sign of distress. I sent the old man on his way. 

Self-contained bicycle touring renders the individual staggeringly vulnerable. There are no barriers protecting you from third party forces. When it rains, you’re wet. When you go to bed at night, there’s no such thing as privacy. The added susceptibility is enlivening, but you must thoroughly heed that little voice in the back of your mind, for it is your only shelter. 

Intuition is a derivative of instinct, meaning it’s a natural state of behavior and requires no special training. Whether it can be improved upon is disputable, but often times—aside from the occasional light or dark beer dilemma—it remains idle in the comfort and convenience of everyday life. 

Following a hunch isn’t strictly reserved for dire circumstance. It can be tapped in situations as simple as making a quick pit stop at a small music shop to purchase a harmonica. While seemingly minuscule in the moment, these intuitive opportunities contribute profoundly on the journey ahead. When a stranger on a beat up mountain bike gave me a smirk in passing in Yosemite, I assumed it was due to my haggard state caused by an overeating episode the night before. But we all know how the old saying about “assuming” goes, so I decided to strike up a conversation. The man turned out to be climbing legend Ron Kauk, and months later I was met with exceptional hospitality in Santa Barbara from friends of his. 

Sometimes our intuitive process works subconsciously. Casually eating strawberries beneath the only shady tree in the rolling pastures of central Washington during the first heatwave of the season, a pickup crept towards me, the driver calling me over. Preparing to accept my lecture about trespassing I approached the car and was greeted with the coldest beer to ever grace my tongue. Despite my preconceived notion of harassment, I was still intuitively drawn to the vehicle in which sat a retired rancher who had experienced a dry palate enough times to assume I needed a morale libation. 

Intuitive reliance while bicycle touring creates an opportunity to dwell less upon caution and in turn embrace the bumps in the road that become the revered moments of the journey. Don’t chase trouble, but don’t hide from it either. 

Photos (in order): The well-toured couple from the Netherlands always rely on intuition on the road, Making eye contact with a stranger turned into a day-long philosophical conversation with climbing legend, Ron Kauk, All we wanted was to meet some characters in Shasta and they found us

Winter Rafting On The Wind River, by Zachary Collier, Best Made Guide to River Rafting

Washington’s Wind River in the Columbia River Gorge flows through a beautiful forested canyon, has nearly nonstop Class IV and V rapids and is therefore my favorite river to raft in the winter. Class IV boaters come to the Wind to prove themselves and veteran guides return here to train for other difficult rivers. The Wind typically runs for 3 or 4 days after a solid rain, and thanks to the Pacific Northwest’s wet winters, we have many opportunities to raft it.

Other than your the first time out on the Wind, it’s best at peak flows. It will test every skill in a rafter’s playbook and if you’re lacking something, this river will teach you the needed lesson with the appropriate punishments. Swims through gnarly rapids and broken equipment are the most common learning experiences. Everyone who runs the Wind has a story about a bad swim or something that the river claimed for itself. My requisite failure came when I flipped end-over-end heading though “Climax” (my third time) and was run over by the boat behind me. I’ve also watched in horror as my frame bent like a paperclip while I was pinned on a rock in “Morning Wood”, so named for the log that juts out rather obtrusively.

I typically run a cataraft (or “cat boat”) on the Wind since they are more forgiving in the challenging rapids. Cat boats have two large tubes with a frame in the center, and they are propelled with 8-10 foot oars. They punch through waves and holes, are lighter and are easier to unpin from rocks than traditional rafts, so they are preferred by many boaters on steep, technical rivers like the Wind.

If you’re a seasoned boater looking to test your skills, consider the Wind your midterm exam. I recommend bringing someone along that knows the river and make sure that your repair/rescue kit is sharper than a No. 2 pencil.

—Zachary Collier

The Watts-Campbell Factory by Jeremy Blakeslee, Best Made Guide to Urban Archaeology Part 2

Charles Watts grew up in this factory — it’s been in his family for generations. He’s a WWII veteran who piloted B-25 Bombers in China (where he left the name Charles behind and now goes by Chad) and came back to run Watts–Campbell well past retirement age. This man is not a dreamer: Chad Watts is a practical, hands-on guy who has already started properly preparing these items for relocation. He’s the type of guy who refuses to sit by and watch our history fall apart and so he’s putting his heart and all his other available resources into it. Unfortunately, he can’t do it alone.

Places like this are very hard to come by. It’s important to preserve these historical sites so that we may learn from them for the years to come. In a country that invented the automobile and the airplane, and the first mass-produced structural steel elements, things have changed quite a lot. This site is even more important than most; the steady march of time is closing down on a significant collection of artifacts in a site that has unique significance to our country’s industrial revolution.

There is often not much I can do to save a historic industrial site so I look to what I can do, which is create photographic records of these places before they are gone, a premise that underlies why I believe urban archaeology is so important. Anyone can do it with a camera, a love of history, and a sense of adventure tempered with good sense.

Site:
Watts-Campbell Company in Newark, NJ (stationary steam engine manufacturing)

Gestation and Permission Status:
Three years from first discovery through conversations and shoot coordination. Guided access granted late November, 2010.

Landscape:
Urban and commercial/industrial.

Gear:
Hasselblad 501 Medium format camera
120mm macro lens
60mm wide angle lens
Hasselblad 903 Superwide Camera, fixed 38mm lens
Incident Meter
Tripod
120mm film

—Jeremy Blakeslee

Best Made Guide to Urban Archaeology Jeremy Blakeslee on The Watts-Campbell Factory, Part 1

When I asked a friend working with the National Museum of Industrial History what the most endangered industrial site in the country was, he replied, “Watts–Campbell”. That was three years ago.

I don’t shoot every industrial building I see. I do research, prioritize, and often find people that know far more than I do to guide me. It’s a bit of an adventure every time. When we were finally given access to Watts–Campbell steam engine manufacturers in Newark, NJ I couldn’t believe that such an impressive collection of historic artifacts—unique tools, extinct equipment, and original drawings—had been left intact. It’s much more usual for this kind of collection to have been slowly weather-beaten, vandalized, and scrapped as it has been in places like Detroit.

The factory is in a neighborhood where you want to keep your wits about you. Outside in the cold morning air sitting next to the factory was a rough–looking car lot dotted with an anemic selection of cars, each worth a few hundred dollars. Mr. Watts had removed the guard dogs for us himself that morning. Inside, we found a living repository of some of the best made and ancient machinery not found anywhere else in the world. Thousands of wooden patterns, stationary steam engines, planers, vertical boring mills customized to accommodate large-scale jobs, steam engine indicators and thousands of original engineering drawings for the famed Corliss steam engines. There were staggering amounts of documentation still present at the site, including sales records to figures as significant to the industrial revolution as Thomas Edison. Everywhere we went, the dogs followed outside, looking in through windows fortified by iron bars.

Founded in 1851, before Lincoln was president and the Civil war had ravaged the country, Watts–Campbell Company became the foremost supplier of big steam engines, and at its peak it employed 300 people. It’s listed in the National Register of Historic Places, but that doesn’t protect it from time or demolition. In fact, all of these historic artifacts are very much in danger of being destroyed. The owner, Charles Watts, was forced to sell the building, but not the artifacts inside. This means the clock is ticking to find a way to move and somehow preserve this equipment somewhere else before it is scrapped.

—Jeremy Blakeslee