Agricultural Database and Spatial Analysis:
Table of Contents
Physical, Logical, and Spatial
Physical Proximity and Separation
Geospatial Infrastructure
Synchronizing Critical Geospatial Infrastructures
Representing Wireless Facilities and Coverage
Wireless Use of the Critical Geospatial Infrastructures
Conclusion
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Physical, Logical and Spatial
To begin forming an understanding of infrastructure interdependencies, it is useful to consider a local and familiar context and its interactions with global context. Is there anything more local than an address? Your address is a destination in many regards, as much for you, as you return home, as it is for the networks of infrastructure that take you there and support your lifestyle once you have arrived. Infrastructure takes a number of forms, so for simplicity of this conversation, we will restrict the infrastructure to only networks and consider how network infrastructures interact, are interdependent and are layered from physical to logical to representative.
A landline phone conversation connects two distant addresses that are also related within many layers of physical and logical infrastructure. You might imagine building a model that includes all of the layers - properties, sidewalks, roads, water pipes, energy, and communications are examples. The phone conversation itself is carried as a signal across copper wire and optical fiber. It represents a logical network in that any two phones on the same physical network can connect through a series of devices as needed at the time of the call. That logical layer is carried on top of the physical network of wires and devices through which the conversation travels. The representative layer is then composed of a series of geospatial datasets that model the physical network, and may even model the logical connectivity.
In this discussion, we want to think about what representative spatial infrastructure we have for modeling our physical and logical infrastructure, and in the context of communications, consider whether we can do a better job, for the common good, to assure that models are available to help us manage, maintain and protect the physical infrastructure on which our day-to-day lives depend.
Physical Proximity and Separation
At the address where the phone conversation originates, the utilities are all buried, and it's a good selling point: a seemingly wireless neighborhood. The ''landline'' copper telephone wires travel 100 feet underground to the house through a plastic conduit, from the base of a utility pole at the end of the block. The wires emerge on the end wall of the house where they connect to the telephone junction box. The electrical wires run along the same path from the utility pole, in a neighboring plastic conduit pipe, and connect to the electric meter just above the telephone junction box. The cable-service coaxial line is also underground, emerging at the far end of the house and running straight into the outside wall. The cable line takes its own path, from the base of the same utility pole, buried only about six inches beneath the lawn and directly in the dirt. A shovel stuck in the dirt at a certain spot may sever the cable wire, cutting TV and internet service, but not electrical or land-line phone service because of the geographical separation between the physical networks at the point of failure. This is typically less by design than convenience, since electrical and phone service may have been installed with the neighborhood, while cable buried in this way was likely added at a later time. If you follow these wires back along their separate paths to the place where they meet at the utility pole, you will find a point under the road where all the critical infrastructure networks supporting the neighborhood are co-located and vulnerable to a single catastrophic event - the phone, electricity, cable, gas, water and sewer. While each service is mapped independently, in nearly all municipalities, there is no single diagram or database displaying the location and interrelationship of all these physical networks to be viewed together.
The utility pole marking that vulnerable spot may stand in a remote comer of town along a road whose surface is broken and potholed and whose curbs are crumbling. This town will eventually award a contract to repave the road and install new curb. When the contractor starts work, they can contact the local One-Call dispatch to request that the buried services be marked on the ground. Here is the one chance to view all critical infrastructure, literally mapped out on the surface of the earth. However, in the interest of saving time and money, that call is sometimes not made, and the results can be dramatic. Consider this scenario: At the base of the utility pole, the backhoe operator digs, and quickly hits the gas main. A spark off the blacktop ignites the escaping gas, causing an explosion that scoops open a crater and severs the power, phone, cable, water and obviously natural gas services that all pass through the same trench. Three workers are hit by the blast. The gas main is a torch of bright blue flame that will hiss until the main valve, three blocks away, is closed. The landline phones in the area will be useless for dialing into the 9-1-1 emergency phone system. Fortunately, someone in a neighboring house, with a mobile phone communicating to a tower two miles to the north, will place the call for fire, ambulance, and police to respond.
The local emergency described above depicts vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure in the broader world. Infrastructure is commonly interwoven such that effects on one layer can potentially impact others in proximity. Similar to real-world settings, this scenario involves examples of utility infrastructures that reach across the landscape together, taking advantage of pole structures and transportation rights-of-way to support them. It also depicts infrastructures that, at least in part, follow their own independent path. Both strengths and weaknesses of our critical infrastructure result from these different relationships. Our behavior in designing infrastructure can sometimes leave us highly vulnerable to tragedy, as with the five services disabled and injurious explosion caused by the single scoop of a backhoe. In other cases, our design gives us the tools we need to guard against complete failure of critical systems supporting emergency response, as with the availability of mobile phone service to make contact with emergency responders. In the case that the mobile phone caller is not able to identify their location, the enhanced 9-1-1 infrastructure is designed to do that on their behalf.
Communications is one among the layers of critical infrastructure; communications, transportation and utilities are the networks of services and activities that support the conduct of day-to-day life, but also support emergency preparedness and emergency response that maintain the security of day-to-day life. This discussion highlights the importance and vulnerabilities of telecommunications as one, and perhaps the single most critical, among these critical infrastructures.
Table 1: Affected Infrastructure - Simplified Critical Infrastructure and Interdependencies
Energy
Gas/Oil - Power for control systems, pumping stations, storage, compressors, facilities
Water - Power for control systems, pumps, lift stations, facilities
Communications - Power for switches and communications facilities
Transportation - Power for signaling, switches, public transportation
Gas/Oil
Electric - Fuel for heat, generators, lubricants for electric facilities
Water - Fuels for treatment, heat, pumps and lift station facilities
Communications - Fuel for heat, generators, and facilities
Transportation - Fuel and lubricants for vehicles, facilities
Water
Electric - Cooling and emissions control, hydro-electric generation
Gas/Oil - Water for production , cooling, emissions control
Communications - Water for cooling facilities
Transportation - Emergency response, commercial public and construction transport
Communications
Electric - Distribution, EMS,, and SCADA communications, customer service, repair-crew communications
Gas/Oil - SCADA, customer service, repair-crew communications
Water - Control system and SCADA communications, customer service, repair-crew communications
Transportation - Signal and control system communications, repair-crew communications
Transportation
Electric - Transport of fuel and shipping of goods and materials, inspection
Gas/Oil - Transport of fuel and shipping of goods and materials, inspection
Water - Transport of water and inspection
Communications -Transport of goods and materials, inspection, and network management
Table 1 is derived from the GITA CIPER Critical Infrastructure and Interdependencies matrix. This table provides a view of multiple functions that each infrastructure provides in support of the others. Telecommunications infrastructure is in large part found in close proximity to multiple other infrastructure layers, and in each case is there in support of those neighboring layers, either via landline or wireless medium. As indicated in Table 1, telecommunications provides support to other infrastructures including distribution communications for electric energy, SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) communications for virtually all utility infrastructure, signaling, maintenance and control systems, and multiple aspects of the transportation infrastructure. Because landline and cable commonly travel the same path along the transportation network, and are simultaneously vulnerable, wireless communications may provide the critical redundancy preventing total failure of notification and response processes.
Geospatial Infrastructure
Many agree that our progress is moving ahead faster than our ability to identify all its impacts. In a geospatial context, we have the ability to simulate our progress as a means to keep track of it, and to use the tools of the trade to model its interactions, interdependencies and conflicts. A great deal of the physical infrastructure has and is actively being modeled. We need to look for examples where more can be done to take advantage of this context and the potential for preventing and preparing for emergencies. Geospatial modeling and analysis of real-world infrastructure includes software capabilities that are developed and provided through a combination of mostly commercial and some public domain providers. The data components for most infrastructure layers are developed and maintained as privately-owned intellectual property Each of the layers listed in Table 1 is represented at varying levels of continuity and completeness within the geospatial infrastructure. Many other reference layers are available in the rich library of data representing the real world; layer by layer. These layers, such as political boundaries, postal boundaries, census, rail, soils, geology, and hydrography, are generally made available from government sources. Aerial imagery at various scales and resolutions, provides a photographic reference for locations on the earth's surface. Aerial imagery is made available from a combination of private and government sources. Both orthographic imagery - map style, looking straight down - and oblique imagery - looking across the landscape - are highly valuable content of the critical geospatial infrastructure. Economics of the market for spatial data have largely determined how each infrastructure layer is created and maintained, and what level of fee is to be paid for licensing its use. The utility layers are typically maintained as the intellectual property of the utility. Similarly, telecommunications infrastructure has been mapped by the industry, with a portion of the generalized content being made available by law, but detailed network information being held as confidential. Road transportation is the only infrastructure layer commercially available at a national and international extent. It is available because the physical road infrastructure is a public good around the world; visible from small scale aerial photography, and its mapping is generally considered to be public information or public information for a price. Additionally, it is economically viable to produce and license an accurate and current streets database for many public and private uses.
A relatively new infrastructure is the coverage and transceiver locations for wireless broadband signal. Because sensing of a wireless network can provide valuable positioning information for Assisted GPS location, the geospatial data layer representing this infrastructure is commercially valuable and under early development while already in use.
Synchronizing Critical Geospatial Infrastructures
Government and private industries rely on wireless carriers to provide information on outages and network-affecting events. The reverse is not possible due to the sensitivity of the data and the issues discussed above. All major telecommunications providers - landline, cable, wireless or more than one of these - employ geospatial technology for map-based planning, engineering and analysis. In all cases, mapping of the physical telecommunications layers relies on use of the road network layer to serve as a template in establishing location where facilities occupy the public right-of-way. Geospatial street network data is increasingly the source of address location, simple routing and complex turn-by-tum navigation knowledge for the world's population, and as such, the massive task of maintaining the street network dataset grows ever more important.
Telecommunications service providers cover large areas and are responsible to install service before many local roads are dedicated and navigable for automotive traffic. As such, the industry has found value in the contribution of community input to street database providers whose data is employed by millions in the pursuit of increasingly accurate location and navigation information. In this manner, the requirements of a telecommunications geospatial infrastructure support the transportation geospatial infrastructure that in turn gives back to telecommunications.
In the management of geospatial infrastructure, the idea of sharing content from one layer to another is the very essence of spatial representation and analysis. For instance, the street centerlines provide for matching of the logical location of a residential address to the physical location in a geospatial database. Starting with a non-spatial address listing, a physical, mappable ''geo-code'' (X,Y coordinate) is created by interpolating along a street centerline with assigned street names and address ranges. Once the geocoded location is established as a point on a digital map, the values for any overlapping layer can be assigned to it. The address ''15 Oak Glen Drive'' is known to be within a specific Zip code, but does anyone know, offhand, what census tract, block group or block it is in? For telephone company regulatory compliance, the phone company actually needs to assign a Wire Center and Rate Center identifier to a customer premise location. This is most easily done using overlapping spatial layers. In these ways, layers within the geospatial infrastructure support one and other to establish a representation of a logical landscape that can not be viewed in the physical world.
As indicated above, the dataset of streets in the geospatial infrastructure is used as the backbone for real world location of many critical infrastructure layers that use the street as their pathway. The reason, as mentioned earlier, is based in simple economics. Mapping functions of telecommunications companies need to meet certain requirements for accuracy in positional terms and in temporal terms. The commercially available and ever improving streets database supports those requirements to a great extent. Once a template such as a streets database is used to define the representative model of communications infrastructure, how is the model affected as the streets layer changes? Some communications service providers are interested in access to the most current street information possible, while others plan against a rarely changing model regardless that changes are generally accepted as improvements.
Representing Wireless Facilities and Coverage
As with the road network, the capacity of the physical and logical communications infrastructure can become a problem under emergency conditions. A wireless network, which was vital to first response in our local example, can become overloaded and congested during major emergencies. The congestion slows connection speeds, blocks calls and delays SMS messages. A wireless network may become just as busy during public events and holidays as well (e.g., a Presidential Inauguration, the Super Bowl or as the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve). These are issues considered by carriers when performing network tuning and performance enhancements. This is important to the carrier and the consumer, but also to responders during events impacting national security and planning for general emergency preparedness.
As the number of personnel in operations relying on wireless networks increases, so does the utility for good underlying geospatial data regarding the serviced areas. There are initiatives underway at Federal, State, Local and Tribal levels of government for information regarding broadband access via a wireless network. The National Communications System's Wireless Priority Service has addressed this at the low level by providing a solution for the prioritization of calls for key personnel in command and control job functions. This is a good foundation, but we still need to address how to model the networks that carry the calls and how to make the model data actionable. A gap exists between modeling the continuum of wireless service and providing reliable geospatial data representing the infrastructure that supports it. The infrastructure interdependencies that wireless data and voice networks create are not mature; however, they are reaching a level of maturity at a pace that far out-performs that of traditional landline networks. Hence, the public availability of geospatial data layers representing wireless networks is a topic of concern. Taking a top-down approach, there are two high level abstractions and distinct data layers that warrant discussion: facility locations and mobile-coverage patterns. First we will discuss coverage and the Radio Frequency (RF) continuum. Typically, carriers have not publicly disclosed their coverage patterns due to the competitive landscape of the industry.
Complicated licensing requirements, the rapid maturity of technology and ambiguity in legislation have lent additional confusion to the subject. These influences can be counterintuitive and confusing for law makers and decision makers. These circumstances have lead to a niche market for vendors able to provide geospatial data layers for wireless coverage patterns and to the availability of geospatial data that may not be based upon industry best practices. Data products that are not based upon a common standard may not be defendable and could ultimately be disclaimed as not serving the public. But the utility for a reliable version of this data cannot be overstated. As wireless networks become more mature and new device functionality forces more dependency on the network, so do all abstractions of business processes and workflows that take advantage of the devices and the network. It can go without saying that in the near future, many devices relying on a wireless network will assist in many facets of our daily lives. Government, the public at large, and carriers alike could benefit from a uniform standard - a policy based on science for mapping the RF continuum. This process does not exist today as each carrier maintains their own standards.
Next we will discuss wireless facilities. Often referred to as sites, towers or locations, this layer as maintained by the carrier is most often considered proprietary. If uniform patterns for predicted coverage exist based upon standard engineering designs and best practices, the facility information does not necessarily need to be shared publicly. In the case of public safety and times of immediate need for the protection and repair of critical sites, the proprietary data can be immediately provided by the carrier to those deemed to have a need to know. Another key ancillary dataset in the geospatial infrastructure for wireless communications is the locations that have backup power in the form of generators or batteries. Decision makers will want to know if this information can be provided in near real time. It is also important to note that wireless data and voice networks rely on an underlying network to communicate with one and other. Facilities must remain connected in order to process call traffic and perform the call hand-off, from location to location, as users traverse the network. E911 and Wireless Priority Service (WPS) are considerations of the carriers and may in time also need to be made available as their own separate abstractions of the parent geospatial data layer.
In order to fully appreciate the possible interdependencies, we must also consider the shift from a wireline to a wireless frame of reference. When speaking of wireless networks, we must think of the relative lifespan of the network technology. Because a wireless network can be deployed with relatively little infrastructure overhead and thereby significantly less investment, the networks tend to have rapid deployment schedules and shorter life spans. The industry has the resulting ability to bring technology to market much faster than the wireline telecommunications industry has seen historically. This fundamental temporal difference has an important effect. The same rules and assumptions cannot apply to wireless that apply to the wireline infrastructure or its spatial representation. This must be kept in mind as the subjects of availability and refresh-rate for the data arise.
Wireless Use of the Critical Geospatial Infrastructures
Wireless carriers map their networks to a degree of accuracy that best suits their needs. A younger network; speaking in age or technology terms, will be mapped differently from a more mature network. For a younger network, the carrier will be more concerned with total build out than with the density of the equipment supporting the network. Initially, reaching more citizens with an acceptable capacity is more relevant than the performance at that capacity. In more mature networks, capacity is added, the network is ''densified'' and the throttling of speed versus capacity becomes an important variable. A road-network layer is essential in baseline performance and coverage mapping as it is the conduit for sample-set extraction. The roads are traversed so that signal strengths can be logged and mapped. In a sense, there could be no performance planning and analysis without a reliable road-network dataset. Today, this is the most reliable way to meter and compare various carriers' networks. This is an expensive and time-consuming process that is not guided by industry or statutory standards. A formal policy on geospatial data submissions for the RF continuum, and an adherence to technology-specific standards for wireless carriers, could yield a dependable, accurate and defendable national-coverage dataset for broadband and other wireless networks.
Conclusion
Critical infrastructure can be characterized as physical, logical or representative. In the geospatial industry, there are software tools and data layers that may be thought of as a representative geospatial infrastructure. The physical and logical critical-infrastructure layers may be simultaneously vulnerable to failures, and the failures may be compounded by the interdependence of the physical networks themselves. The geospatial community has demonstrated value of the geospatial infrastructure in providing planning support and synergistic content integration providing key relationship knowledge that is not recognizable in any other form. Focusing on the communications infrastructure as perhaps the most critical layer for emergency management and response, it is evident that a common good can be served by standardizing and making available the geospatial content needed to serve these ends. However, business and market constraints can limit the practical development of geospatial infrastructure whose value is clear in preparation and response for physical infrastructure protection. Representation of the wireless infrastructure is a special, critical case due to the rapid growth and constant change of its physical infrastructure. Policy and national support may be required to build out the geospatial infrastructure so that it can meet the goal of critical infrastructure protection for wired and wireless communications; this in turn serves in many respects to protect all other layers of the critical infrastructure.
Latter Day John Snow
Prompted by Adena Schutzberg, of Esri, asking for "more John Snow" stories, I offer the following two, which I have taught with visible impact to classes of nascent geo-analysts. For reference, John Snow (1813 – 1858) was a London Physician who pioneered spatial epidemiology by using a map to identify a water well as the source of a class-indifferent cholera outbreak in 1854. My latter-day John Snow’s…
In the Wetlands
In one of my earliest professional roles, I worked in GIS at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). The tech was still very new and the capability for digital vectors and rasters in overlay was obscure, to say the least. Obviously, it has become an essential tool of the trade, but at that point it was still alchemy, and DEP provided my awakening to it's potential. It is naturally DEP's responsibility to enforce riparian rights (legalities of access and use of water bodies on your property), and as it turned out, GIS overlay was the perfect tool for their purposes. In this case, a wetland had been filled for a construction project, without a permit, and DEP spotted the transgression. In an area that was challenging to survey to the necessary level of detail, the transgressor claimed that the waterbody was entirely on their property. Perhaps they'd be fined but they should have the legal right to carry on, so it went to court. With digital aerial photography (scanned) and digital property boundaries in hand - both at adequate levels of positional accuracy - DEP was able to demonstrate to the court, beyond question, that the waterbody was shared with a neighboring property, under different ownership. It was the proverbial open-and-shut case. The story made an impact on me because, while I thought I was cool, using GIS to convert paper geologic maps to digital vectors, here was an example where the software and two distinct data formats came together as exhibit A in a court of law, and that was really cool.
In the Desert
My first scenario is vintage and I can only offer the word-of-mouth version, but the next scenario, which I've also used as a teaching tool, is somewhat more recent, topical - even in this moment - and very well documented. It was perhaps 2006 when I saw John Calkins, of Esri, present the Natanz Demo at the Partner Conference and that was really, really cool! John's narrative used leading-edge GIS to walk through management and interpretation of a series of original map products; either scanned and registered paper maps, or digital satellite imagery. John explained what could be gleaned from each successive map layer. For instance, what evidence of "culture" was depicted in the area of Natanz, Iran, on NGA's paper topographic maps from 1986? What was depicted on Russia's maps of similar vintage, and what was depicted on Iran's own maps, from 2001? Then, showing the significantly enhanced power that high-resolution satellite imagery provides for temporal analysis, John added and compared successive layers to depict exactly what was visible on the ground, and when. Suffice it to say that, had US Intelligence and the IAEA been using the analysis, this was GIS delivering another open-and-shut case. The interpretation left no questions as to the capabilities buried in the Iranian desert in the early 2000's. For me, that 15-minute demo is a leading candidate as the latter-day Snow Map.
For those familiar, please report to me any errors or significant omissions.
Mark Fiorentino - Sep 2025
How Did You...
...come to visit Barbados? There are countless stories of why and how and I’m always interested to hear the details. Some stories are mundane; a travel agent chose it. Or it can be pure luck, as when you work with someone who has a time share here. Sometimes it is special, as when your sister has chosen to come marry here. Perhaps it is just the place you always wanted to visit. In my story, which is probably my favorite story, it is family. In particular, it is Mom who was a child of the island. Somebody must, right? Born here in the twenties, she left Barbados as a teen on her own. No runaway, she was destined for Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; City of Brotherly Love, where she would attend University. Over the summers she would bring acquaintances home to visit. Now these were folks with a great been-to-Barbados story. In those days, international holiday travel was just not the thing for the working class, and Mom’s college acquaintances would have grown up just so in Philadelphia. In that time and place, going to the beach meant Saturday’s in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Now, at school, they meet this “alien” friend with an odd accent and English ways, and it comes as the most pleasant of shocks that she could bring them to visit her exotic home where they will wind up spending summer months eating mangos and eddo soup, riding horses along cane-field roads and collecting shells along beach strands like they could never have imagined. Not a bad story at all, and since that time when Mom brought her first friend here, she has brought friends and family time and again. One, in those college days, turned out to be Dad. In the course of achieving college degrees, she did also find love in the US, and of course had to bring him home for inspection. When Dad came for the first time, it was as if he had fallen asleep to awaken in a dream land of plantation mansions, yachting, lawn tennis, and cricket; all giving a very new meaning to the concept of coming home to meet her parents. Though he was something of a stranger in paradise, it seems everyone hit it off well enough, since his second visit saw their wedding, conducted in the grand style, and their honeymoon, up to Kingsley Club on the east coast, at Cattlewash on Sea. These events were the seeds of something big for the family they would start in the US – American kids that would come here and love it and keep coming back, bringing friends and eventually families of our own.
So maybe my story of getting here falls more in the category of luck. I have been lucky to visit quite a few times, and I love it like no place else. And in many ways it is like no place else. For its history, its cuisine, its culture, its weather, its geography; both how it looks and where it sits, it is a rare jewel of a nation that’s always been a challenge to get to and, in a different way, yet more of a challenge to leave. By its location, off to the east of the Lesser Antilles, it still maintains the divide between the bath-tub Caribbean to its west, and the butter-churn Atlantic to its east. Everybody has their preference, but for me, as I write this I long to be on an east coast beach; at the Crane with its waves of champagne, or Bottom Bay riding breakers all day. It was at Cattlewash where my parents, as newlyweds, first collected shells and stayed clear of the fierce rip tide. I know that for most visitors, the frame of reference is the west coast, and for good reason. The west coast bristles with resorts and shopping from the island’s bottom to its top. The azure waters of the Caribbean pour gently like a cool blue cocktail, and there is more tourist day-life and nightlife along the west coast by far. But since I have always been visiting family here, I have been looking neither for resorts nor shopping. I grew up knowing much more of the rough-and-tumble cliffs and tides of the east coast; from North Point down to Foul Bay, than of the swimming-pool beaches and cocktail bars that stretch along the west coast from South Point up to Archers Bay. In my experience, it is to the east coast where locals go for a break.
As always, after my most recent visit I wondered, when can I come back? And while I surely was not asking it at the tail end of my very first visit - I was one – after every trip since, at five, at eight and ten, at thirteen and still when? I have asked it more emphatically each time. At some point a transition started, from my parents deciding when I had come, to my wife and I deciding, along with my brother and his wife. We had the nerve to come here with them on their honeymoon! (So I have that special been-there story as well.) Before long we had children to bring, and for some years it has been us answering the question for the next generation who has discovered our good fortune that Mom; Granny in this case, left Barbados, giving us all the chance to come back again and again.
Sands of Time
For my work I travel -- a lot -- but I do enjoy it thoroughly. I visit more places in a year than most people visit in a life. I find that folks expect flying off here and there every other week should drive me crazy, but traveling has meant such excitement for me since I was small that I consider it a treat. I even see business travel as a part of my compensation. Travel is an optimistic endeavor no matter where I’m headed. Yes, I’ve been to Barcelona, Spain and Paris, France and Oslo, Norway but not every destination is a glamour spot, and I may wind up in Oakland, California, or Bismarck, North Dakota or Livingston, Ontario. Still I still find reason to be enthusiastic about travel, and that feeling ties back to the excitement I felt as a child headed for the airport. Whether my family was going to an airport to travel out, or we were going to retrieve someone coming to visit from overseas, driving to the airport always meant that something big was happening. Now, when I step onto a plane, somewhere deep inside, maybe I expect that I’ll step off in Barbados.
Just the traveling here does bring memorable adventures, and so I enjoy the activity of traveling all on its own. There are sweet memories like a flight we took on British Overseas Airways; BOAC – when I was five. The head flight attendant (the stewardess in those days) pinned me with airline’s wings; real metal wings. She gave me a logbook for recording my travels, and brought me into the cockpit for a pre-flight tour. I remember it like I could still work the controls, and I do still have that logbook. There have been less pleasant travel memories as well. In the days before cell phones, my brother seemed lost in transit with his girlfriend, as they had been off-loaded from a stop-over in San Juan because the plane to New York was overbooked. We had no idea where they were for a time, and it was a long night at JFK, but we eventually did see them home. On another stop in San Juan when I was thirteen, I found that US Immigration really meant it when they said they wouldn’t let me off American protected soil without proof of who I am; no birth certificate, no departure. If you leave without proof of who you are, they will not just be able to let you back in on your return. Eventually we did pay a notary to swear that I was an American citizen – perfectly legal, mind you. Meanwhile my birth certificate was shipped on ahead so I could get back home when the time came. So even the less cherished travel memories have seemed to work out and make for good stories to relate over time. Mostly, of course, it is not the plane flights or airports that have been so memorable, as it has been the places we’ve stayed and the things we’ve done while we were here.
From trip after trip over the years, we naturally accumulated stacks of photos that have been discussed and displayed to friends and family over and over. From my younger years many related “memories” surely result from having been told what was going on when a certain photo was snapped. The scene with the pipe, the pith helmet and the cocktail glass was at a family gathering in sixty six… I know I have constructed recollections from photos that I wouldn’t otherwise have. But the memories I treasure most are the ones that do not involve a photo. I remember, without need of a photo, when I was five, we stayed in an expansive villa, known as Beachy Head, and shared it with 4 other families. Now still known by the same name, it is no longer for rent, but back in1966, when we did rent the place, it was a palace from a dreamy summer-holiday film. The guests came from all over and we sat for huge dinner meals and there were vast morning migrations of people down to the sea. We watched the fishermen pull in the catch of sea urchins and we hid in the caves behind the great coral boulders. I have not been back to that house since, but I have been to the beach, and it truly remains as I remember it from when I was five.
From Beachy Head, around the corner may be one of the sweetest beaches in the world. It is the Crane, and above it the Crane Hotel. Upstairs you have a spectacular view and a meal to match. Downstairs you have a cane sugar beach, seeming almost private (though none of Barbados beaches are), where you can get a stiff rum punch and feel the unexplainably light frothing surf that mystifies all who visit. I do not see folks diving from the Crane cliffs any longer, but I remember that when small I watched with awe as my brothers and cousins disappeared over the edge and into sea below. It took me years to gather up the same courage, and when at thirteen I finally dove off the cliffs at Sam Lord’s. I have only just done that again recently and I was petrified. I now cannot believe I had the courage to do that at thirteen!
So Beachy Head, Crane Beach, Sam Lord’s and many more along the east coast are the beaches that make my memories most special. Afternoon’s in the waves with family. Tennis-ball cricket on the beach with whoever is around. Roasting roti and the Christmas tree in a bon fire on twelfth night. Foul Bay, Soup Bowl and Cattlewash, Long Bay, Skeete’s Bay, and the Ragged Point light; the beaches and cliffs of the east coast are a wonder. Gun Rock is a cliff with great memories for me. It is not so very far north of where the coast turns a corner and begins to get crowded with houses, docks and businesses at the Village of Oistins. Still, Gun Rock is hard to find, along that section of the southeast coast, where cliff and beach access is not so regular. But what a joy it is to see the waves at play there when you do find it. I was ten when I stayed in a vacation house there, and we would walk out along the cliff, over the thorns of the eroded lava rock. When the sea is surging with the tide’s advance, Gun Rock takes in more water than it can hold, and the volley of sound builds from a splash to the great gun blast that gives the rock its name. On a light night it’s simply a wonder. Recently we stayed near there again, at Sam Lord’s, where the cliffs can be at angle to the lineup of waves flowing in. On a rare stormy day, I sat on the veranda with my children, niece and nephews. We watched as each wave burst out from pockets along the cliff wall for a mile down towards Gun Rock. A good one would explode five or six times as contact with the island made its way along the cliff wall in our direction. A stormy day along the east coast may keep you out of the surf, but it will pay you back with such entertainment and rare beauty.
Bathsheba can be entertaining, and it can be dangerous. I have watched a troop of surfers battling the morning waves to get beyond the breakers of Soup Bowl, and Bathsheba is where I first learned the words dangerous undertow. Locals will tell you that Cattlewash got no back door. But for all its rugged power and majesty, the Bathsheba coast can be charmingly calm and quietly beautiful as well. The first time our children came to Barbados, we happened on Bathsheba as the sun sank behind Chalky Mount. We stopped into the Round House and we walked along the sometime sandy sometimes rocky shore. In beyond the reach of the softening waves of low tide, just below the water’s surface, the eroded coral of Bathsheba provides natural bathtubs, complete with a paint box of aquatic friends. The kids did not know whether to chase the sea creatures or to run from them. Yet at a different time of day, you could visit the same spot where our children splashed and giggled in knee deep pools, but you would be up to your ears in a roaring and powerful ocean.
The Bathsheba bite was carved, from out of ages upon ages of coral reef, by the power of the eroding sea, winds and rains. The great rocks of Bathsheba that were left standing are still slowly battered to pieces by the sea. The poignant Finger Rock stood true to its name and 20 feet high when I was a child, but my children never had the chance to see it. It is gone completely now; lowered in a storm two decades past. It’s neighbor, one of a number known as Round Rock; stands both rotund and defiant, yet still loses a bit of its girth each year to the gnawing teeth of the sea. All along the Atlantic coast there are smaller bites out of the coral wall that have ground down into charming and secluded beaches – each with its own special character and challenges to access. But if you find them, you will thank me for pointing the way.
What’s for Dinner
Man cannot live on beach alone. When it does come time for a meal, you will find that, small though it is, the foods of many nations fit into Barbados. It seems that once there was an empire, and the variety of food came with it from home and from its possessions around the world. Those foods have all been shared and passed down through the generations, and, as a result, had their impact at home on our family dinner table - and all who shared it. Though the exotic cuisine of our evening meal wasn’t always a favorite for visitors, I have many friends who recall a meal at mom’s table, for good or bad, as among the most unforgettable of their lives. My wife and my sisters-in-law each recall their initiation to our family’s diet as nothing if not a shock to the system. That is largely thanks to the unique blend of culinary culture that followed mom as she left this melting pot of - well - food. If you have been here for more than a day, I’m betting that you have already enjoyed one of the now many chic, artistic eateries that paint a dining masterpiece using the most sophisticated of leading edge gastronomic palettes. French and contemporary kitchens thrive here on tourism with the same kind of success as the local artists and the rum distilleries. Make no mistake that my favorite places to dine out here are in amongst the world’s top ranked, but if you are looking for a local experience, keep in mind that the traditional organ meats, curries and unbearably pepper-hot stews are not typically found amidst the fare of the top shelf eateries. From amongst the more challenging items on the traditional menu, my personal favorite is a pepper pot, but if you seek it out, please be warned it has laid low both the Teflon tongue and the cast-iron stomach.
Obviously, no matter how challenging the offering, how adventuresome your tastes, whether you eat out, or cook for yourself, if you are not indulging in the fruits de mer you aren’t getting all you can out of the island. For its A-1 favorite fruit of the sea, Barbados is known as the land of the flying fish. The place has uniquely developed the knowledge, throughout the population, of how to properly bone the little gems and so you will not find them eaten anywhere in the volume that they are eaten here. The bones can be worse than a nuisance, so other islands will just sell their entire whole-flying fish catch to Barbados because they have not the technique and perhaps the patience to make the sweetmeat safe for ingestion. I had an uncle who always said, one bone and I’m done. Eating the flying fish, for us, is among the treasured rituals of the visits to or from the islanders. Regardless of the time of day or night, the first thing to do on congregating in the kitchen with the newly arrived, has always been to mix up a batch of rum punch and to heat up the breaded and spiced flying fish fillets. As unique as the flying fish here, the hot sauce is unlike that from anywhere else and makes the perfect topper. Give us a glass of planter’s punch, a stack of fish with a puddle of hot sauce and we could drink, chew and chat on into night.
While the flying fish often comes frozen because it is seasonal, in our recent visits here, we have done well at getting the fish too-fresh as well. At Skeete’s Bay and Oistins or even from the fisherman right off the beach we’ve had memorable meals on today’s catch. I have been to Oistins for the she-dolphin (a.k.a. mahi-mahi). The female is tastier and easy to tell apart from the male because of her sloped forehead compared to his square. I have been to Skeete’s Bay for the fresh flying fish by the fist full, or at least by the bag. If you are lucky enough to stay out on the rocks at Sam Lord’s, dinner can be the freshest sea food meal possible. Standing looking over the cliff, we met Cedric and James, floating in a colorful open fishing boat, bobbing like a cork on the sea fifteen feet below. The men called up to us that they were goin’ out spear fishing and would we want them to bring back dinner? Well, yes, thanks, we called back – enough for ten. They were gone and home, licketey split, and brought back a catch of chub and grouper from the reef to the beach just down the stairs from our villa. They cleaned it all on a table at the beach and sold it to us as fresh as the moment, and for a damn good price.
So that was a yummy meal and a good keepsake, but getting fresh fish for dinner was never so memorable as a trip out to the reef, from Gibbs Beach, with a fishing party composed of my Uncle, my brothers and a friend we brought along on that visit. We manned an open wooden boat, with a motor that would take us out and back but not much further. I was young; only 8, and that meant I was big enough to go without a life vest, but too small to fight in case anything big came along on a line, or so I was told. So, I didn’t fish but I watched closely. I want to tell you, I remember the menacing teeth of my brother’s catch; a 30 inch barracuda thrashing angrily in the bottom of the boat, and I remember the rainbow of struggle that his friend reeled in; a mahi of about equal size. I’m hoping you’re lucky enough to know, first-hand, such a fresh catch for dinner some day.
There was a time when certain fruits of the sea other than fish where available; exotic items such as sea eggs and turtle eggs. Knowing their rarity and the struggle that sea turtles have just to survive, most people would not dream of eating a turtle egg now, and thankfully so. Not long ago that was just a little delicacy that came along now and again and eating it seemed like a treat instead of a threat to a species. Sea eggs do not get so much airtime on TV with the nature crusaders, but they too are endangered here. Sea eggs are urchins in fact. The white ones with the short stubby spines are edible, though no longer legal to harvest in most of the islands. With the consistency of scrambled eggs when cooked, and the color of poached salmon, they may not be appealing to everyone, but in their day they were a delicacy.
The inedible sort of sea urchin you will know from the waters off Barbados is the long-spined urchin with a less affectionate moniker; black cobbler. You will want to stay clear of these nasty’s that actually reach out and grab with their spines if you get close enough, and to assure that their victim is convinced of its mistake, the spines deliver a toxin that burns like a hot poker. If you put enough people snorkeling out with the cobblers on coral in 8 or 10 feet of water, someone is bound to get stuck. Sadly, for my dad, on a perfectly blue-sky beach day at Blue Point Beach, in an effort to help my brother out of an imagined swimming distress, dad took a dozen quills in the foot. The quill is as sharp as a pin, but more brittle then a dry pine needle, and so although the black cobbler quill goes in easily enough, it does not come out in one piece. Though there are a number of recipes for extracting the poisonous quills, in dad’s case the photographic record shows that he took the dripping hot wax treatment, the rum-punch sedative, and the appropriate level of bravery. I myself have been fortunate not to take on a cobbler spine in my snorkeling forays, but have not been so lucky as to escape the grasp of another local scourge; the man-o-war – a blue-tentacled relation of the jelly-fish that has adapted the additional skill of sticking to its victims to deliver the most potent dose of its poisonous secretion. I did have a tangle with a man-o-war, which got me primarily around the posterior. In this case the photographic record shows me, cheeks up, with baking soda caked on supposedly to draw the toxin from the slash marks left by the evil beast.
The Catamaran
When my brothers and I were children, naturally we did not live in a theme-park and video-game world. To counter the saturation of exhilarating experiences we have provided for our kids on DVD’s, we have also tried to provide a mix of other sorts of enjoyment. We cling to a hope that the video-game level of stimulation is not always required to adequately amuse them. Concerts and shows and great museums and sporting events and simple enjoyment as well have all found their way into the experience of our children. Still, if they do not get at least a modicum of over-the-top excitement on a regular basis, an imbalance can develop and really take the wind out of the sails on an otherwise perfectly good vacation. While visiting here does offer a good number of unusual activities and great bragging rights, the truly exciting times can be limited for young kids. Fortunately, we have found an activity that we all love and that gives us both the sublime enjoyment of nature as well as the visceral jolt of a blazing roller coaster. We’ve twice taken a catamaran charter from Bridgetown up to the middle of the west coast and back, and for all the other activities we’ve notched, I don’t think we’ve had six solid hours to compare, where we all enjoyed the same activity so very much and came back with so many varied stories to tell about it. And if these things matter to you, it’s a big bonus that it is not a theme park of some kind, added just to solve the problem that all parents have with a paradise vacation. The catamaran is genuine Barbados, mostly powered by nature, and all about participating in and being thrilled by nature. My family has sailed on Bajan seas for generations, but by my birth in the US, I missed that boat all but entirely. When I come back and I have the chance to sail and to take my children, I feel as if I am fulfilling a family obligation. We have done it with local family and with family that has come along with us. There are always lots of strangers on the boat, but to a person (aside from the seasick) it is ceaseless and fairly unbridled joy for the entire trip.
For anyone not experienced at boating, the adventure begins by simply setting foot on the craft. My kids want to know where can you walk and where can you stand and don’t we need life vests and when does the sail go up? The excitement builds as we get under way, and ship out engine-powered from the careenage and out beyond the point to what seems it must be the open ocean!... though not a quarter mile offshore. As the sails are raised, the wind grabs hold of us where the mast meets the hull. Even if you understand how that works, it is still amazing to sense that invisible force pressing us smoothly forward through the swells that alternately become the valleys that shelter us and the ridges that provide the view into the next valley. On board, we are draped across the net that serves as the deck for a third of the ship. Arms and legs dangle through and thrill for a splash from the crests we are leaving behind. We crash and cruise on a course straight out from the deep water harbor and turn north to follow the coast up into the calm of the Caribbean. We take on cocktails and snacks and watch for the next way point.
Although a few introductory words are spoken about where we are going, and what we’ll see, the catamaran is not a guided tour with points of interest barked from a megaphone throughout. That’s not to say points of great interest aren’t on the itinerary. On one trip we stopped to take lunch at the beach below one of the most expensive properties on the island. That was more of an amusement then anything, but the stop before lunch is the one everyone sees as most engaging. Some time not so long past, there was a man who lived near the Crane and he made a hobby of raising and releasing turtles; sea turtles. Hard to say whether he had a grand plan in doing so. Nonetheless, thanks to his efforts, at certain spots along the south coast and the west coast you can find a reliable gathering of turtles just doing what they do. The catamaran knows where to drop anchor so we can don mask and fins and have at it to keep up with the unlikely speedsters. Though there are usually dozens cruising up and down in the water column at 200 yards offshore, getting the touch of a foot or a shell is quite an accomplishment. You will be glad for an underwater camera to capture that moment, since friends at home won’t believe it unless they see it.
So in and out of the water we’d go, snorkeling in search of a tolerant turtle, and straying to identify which dazzling reef fish are pecking their lunch off the coral outcrops nearby. When snorkeling gets old, the kids have found great excitement in leaping off the gunnels of the boat, with or without a life preserver, into the welcome waters 8 feet below. When our time is up and we point the bow south again, my family lines up along the bow beam of the boat, arms latched over the supporting strut, and legs dangling as near the water as we dare reach. As an afternoon breeze picks up and we near the boundary between the calm sea and the churning ocean, the hulls press into the swells giving us the momentary thrill of dipping a toe or being full-on splashed by the chop we’re chasing. Better than the turtles in my mind, that reach for home, latched to the bow by only our limbs, has got to be one of the most exciting times I have had with my children. I cannot recommend it enough.
Fin
I am out of stories for the time being. I hope my recollections give you some new ideas to go on as you make your second and third and twentieth visit here more memorable than the one before. Right now I truly don’t know when is the next time I’ll step off a plane in Barbados, but I’m always scheming to come back, and until I do I’ll relive these memorable visits, often and vividly.
My chin need not be satin
But my tresses as they are
Grow unchecked and need attention
Where’ve you gone my dear bar-bar
My razor out, my combs arrayed
The mirror a polished see
A nervous four, maybe six to start?
Make a laughing stock of me
Now match this length to the other side
No one to chat nor to confide
How are the kids?
Did you get that new ride?
My jangling nerves, the lights a-flicker
Am I sharper on a dram of liquor?
Instead let a random friend come shear
Oh Vincent, watch that dangling ear
Once your arms again conduct aloft
When we can get closer than a six foot strut
I’ll clap my hands in thanks for yours
And tip ever like it’s my last hair cut
Mark Fiorentino
(please do not copy without permission)
Contact: Mark Fiorentino... mfiorentino@bimshire.org