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Our Urban State

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A while back I showed off the population of New York State in 2010, based on every town’s population. We looked at population density of various towns, and how it’s very dense in a few towns, and very spread out in most of state. Today, let’s look at a map of the developed areas of NY State.

Craziness at the Early Vote place

Roughly 10% of the state is urbanized… the rest of state is rural.

So what goes on in the rest of state? About 24% of the state is farmed — lots of cows, corn, alfalfa and hay, but an even bigger portion is essentially wildlands, covered with water or forest lands.

Distance to State Parks

It’s not to say people don’t live in other areas — they do. But small rural houses and farm steads are just footnotes, in a largely wild, forested or farmed landscape that makes up most of New York.

Department of Hype and Overreaction

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I slept in this morning. But when I awoke, there really wasn’t much snow at all.

Dog's Eye View

People said the yesterday was going to be awful, but it didn’t snow until after 5 pm.

Barn

And in the evening, it just was a nuisance snow, by 10 AM, mostly all removed.

Heavy Snow Falling

… So I’m just a little annoyed by the hype.

Outside the 2%

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I live and work in an urbanized area. For most of week, I get on a bus or walk from place to place, go to work, go to the library, and otherwise interact with others in an urbanized fashion. People from Albany are pretty urban, by no means is Albany a farm town — although there are certainly many rural areas around Albany.


View Larger Map

Yet, despite all the time I spend in Albany, the city really is just a little dot on the map compared to vast lands around it. Drive less then 20 miles in any direction, and chances are you’ll be in a mountain town, a farm town, or some kind of national or state forest.

Untitled

Albany is a large enough of a metro-area to have a very urban feel to it. It’s cities have all of the regular urban problems, from drugs to gang violence. But your never very far from the rural hinderlands, and truly rural areas that are largely independent from the city’s regular activities.

Sun is Setting

With the cold weather of the past two months, I’ve spent much too much time in city. But getting back up to Vermont I’ve come to realize all I’ve missed, outside the 2%.

As Summer 2012 Fades Away

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The endless summer has shown it must come to an end. I woke up the other day at Moose Plains, and the temperature was only 46 degrees out. It was a chilly morning out, but only a symbol of what is to come as we fade into winter. Daylight is rapidly dropping every day.

Labrador Pond

Probably it would not be as big of deal for me, if I didn’t have to work so much during the fall. But I expect this fall to be a very busy season, where I won’t get to spend much time in the wilderness, camping, hiking, and spending time outdoors until mid-November. You know, I got to work and make money for the toys. And by mid-November, the winter will be well among us.

North Fork Mountain

There is nothing to stop to winter from returning. And as soon as winter comes, winter will be on its way out, as we move back towards April and ultimately mid-May when things finally green up and the endless days of summer return once again. It’s the cycle of life.

Inside the Pine Creek Gorge

… It just seems like summer is much too short.

After 12 Years Have I Abandoned My Blog?

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Recently, I have been posting a whole lot less to my blog. Fewer essays, and I even broke the pratice of posting new content and/or reruns in recent weeks. I keep posting new photos as I go on trips, but I have been doing fewer and few maps. And due to issues with the blog software, some maps just keep disappearing.

I have been doing more reading, less writing. Twitter has filled in the gap, because most of the things I have to say, are best said conservations are really quite short. Often it’s best to just leave things up to the experts, and point to their words more, and mine less.

Grape Farm Along Canal

I continue to work on the next version of the blog software. I swore it would be ready in May or June, yet I still don’t have a functional version. It’s my fault, because the weather has been so nice, I’ve not really wanted to spend much time blogging or writing code. It will probably have to wait for winter now.

But also, I’ve just run out of good ideas for blog posts. I am tired of making up stuff, and the reality is some of my best ideas and posts have already been written, so why rewrite? I also don’t want to duplicate posts that are already done. Why waste my time or internet bandwidth, repeating what is already done.

At any rate, the blog is kind of in low-gear for now. Better stuff will come eventually though, or so I hope. I really hope to have things really back up to speed by Winter 2013.