Ship's Holog: June 2078, fragment #10

Today we launched our ship from a small, deep-water lakeside village in the southern part of Lake Champlain. We have been cruising slowly northward, taking our time to get to know our new vessel. In selecting our crew from among our large family, we have been careful to include several with sailing experience. My daughter, Amelia, still a practicing biochemist at the age of 75, had sailed around the world in the late-2020s on a three-year educational and scientific expedition. My son-in-law, Queequeg, a retired registered nurse, had done a good bit of sailing in the Caribbean while sowing his wild oats, also in the late 2020s. (In fact, Anna and Queequeg met when her boat put in at an island where he was living and tending bar.) Both of my great-grandchildren, Uncas and Sacajawea, are accomplished and powerful canoeists, having spent years white-water canoeing on the Connecticut and White Rivers. However, none of us are really seasoned sailors, so we all have a lot to learn.

We have decided to keep to the middle of the lake, especially in its lower half where it is quite narrow, in order to avoid being recognized by anyone along the shore who might have met any of us over the many years our family has lived and worked in New Vermont. Still, with our professional quality holocam, we are able to capture detailed images of the shore communities and the land beyond them. For example, the holocom you may now be viewing is of the landscape on the southern portion of the eastern shore of the lake.

If you are successfully receiving our holocom, you should be able to hear my voice and see the 3-D holographic images we are holcoming. In case you are simply reading a transcript of our holog, you will have to imagine what I am describing of the landscape along the shores of Lake Champlain in New Vermont.

You should be able to see three important geographic features of the land:
1) a chain of bare, reddish-brown mountains etched against the clear blue sky
2) lush green farmlands that run almost to the edge of the lake
3) the shoreline, blanketed by a nearly continuous settlement consisting of block-long three and four-story red and grey granite buildings, running virtually the entire length of the lake.