Coworkers and Friends with Planes

2006-11-19 06:31:05.000 – Jon Cotton,  Observer

East at Night

We miss Rita up here. She fit in well with the working and living community and seemed to understand the lifestyle. Which is all the more impressive given she felt ill the entire four days. Good company under stress, that’s a talent. And she stayed up (outside on the deck) for the entire sunrise yesterday which is more than Mister Renzi can say. He was against the glass of the State Park rotunda for about 15 minutes before returning to his blankets. He tends toward the night owl hours.

Rita works at our Bartlett Research Facility where her job is largely working with the climate record. Right now she is coordinating with the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Research department digitizing their multi-decade temperature and snow pack data from all the backcountry huts. Part of the process and outcome is analyzing for trends and snow persistence from year to year. This is part of a larger, grant-funded project to study the change in treeline, status of the alpine zone and get a feel for the snow trends in New Hampshire. By coming to the summit, Rita was able to experience the routine duties of observing to better understand the mountain weather.

Two days after writing about our aircraft admiration and I have exciting news. We bought a plane on eBay! It’s a Russian airliner with heated windows and heated seats. Okay so for real, a local pilot from Moultonborough, NH flew overheard today to give us his greetings. He is a friend of John Lind (often celebrated volunteer extraordinaire) and hosted John at his house last night. John came up today with State Park to do some work over the weekend. So here’s to planes, local pilots, and volunteers!

In enjoyment of the fantastic calm and clear weekend, all of us went hiking today. We spread out in different directions at different times and canvassed a good bit of ground. The picture is looking east with Jackson and North Conway in the foreground and Portland, Maine on the horizon to the left.

This morning’s undercast sunrise.
The tower with sunrise today.

Jon Cotton,  Observer