100th Meridian

 If you have taken a class with me that involves the United States in any way, you have seen me point out the 100th degree west longitude on more than one map. Often this begins when I am showing the iconic Earth at Night satellite mosaic from NASA. On that image, we can see patterns formed by the expansion of the railroad, a century after cars largely replaced rail travel. I then point out maps of political bounaries, elevation, rainfall, or whatever other maps are handy.

All of which is to say that the line has been an important part of how I think about the continent for a very long time. By now I have forgotten where I first learned of the notion -- probably one of my mentors at Miami of Ohio, where I learned to teach physical geography. 

HBA Archipelago

Have you been to a place if you have only visited its airport? Absolutely! 

Find the FLN airport on the map below
for the story of this photo.

I have been to a few, and I have a story about most of them. In fact, I am gathering these on my latest Google Map. Every airport that I can remember is shown, with the legend in order of their AITA codes. A follow-up project when I am really trying to procrastinate on real-life projects will be to find the story behind some of those obscure codes. 

Putting this together (I am probably 80 percent done at this writing) has brought back quite a few fun memories. 

I have named the map BHA as a fake AITA code, even though it is the real code for Hobart, Tasmania. The title of this blog post, of course, is homage to a more famous title from which I originally learned the word archipelago. As I consider that book, I would suggest that an airport archipelago is the inverse of that described by Solzhenitsyn. Airports are similar to each other and widely scattered, but quite the opposite of gulags, in that they provide access to the places in which they are found.