Am flying to Maryland today to finally interview a fascinating cartographer who worked on the DEW Line project up near the Arctic Circle in the 1950s.

I stumbled upon him, or rather his photographs, while researching my graduate thesis project, a spec script set in Nunavut, Canada—in and around Baffin Island. His daughter had posted her father’s photographs from his time there to her flickr account.

Our first correspondence was in February of 2008. And here it is June 2009 and I’m finally listening to the advice of William Zinsser and getting on that plane. “If a subject interests you,” he writes at the end of chapter 23 in his book On Writing Well, “go after it, even if it’s in the next county or the next state or the next country.

“Decide what you what to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.”

I am so happy to have finally arrived at step three, even if I wonder if I might be subconsciously endorsing Nike.

- - - - -

PHOTO CREDIT: Bill McTigue, as posted to flickr by his daughter Terry (link to entire set of photographs above).