Analog Maps in the Digital Age

[Wokabaut_Meri]

Having been born BC (before computers and calculators) I learnt to navigate with paper maps and they are still my preference even though I am an avid user of modern technology. One of my first careers was as a Drafting Officer with the Lands Department hand painting maps of the State. My last was designing and managing websites and databases.

Recently I came across an article about Tom Harrison who makes wilderness paper maps by hand and this paragraph really resonated for me:

When we look at a paper map, Harrison told me, we see more of the surroundings and less of ourselves, whereas digital is the other way around. A digital map, downloaded onto a phone or found on an app, can be revised quickly and cheaply but eliminates the need to locate yourself in the landscape. The premise is that you are the center of everything; there is no map without you.

Isn't this a really interesting point of view - locating/losing yourself in a landscape as opposed to being central to the map. It was one thing I really missed on the Camino - a map with enough detail and distance to satisfy my curiosity in the surrounding vistas. We bought a relief map of the entire Francés in Santiago which gave our journey the deeper and added perspective described in the article.

 

[JohnCP43]

I grew up around "analog maps" some of which dated back to early 1600's that were in my grandfather's house. I almost came to grief at the start of my academic career when my kindergarten summoned my mother to voice her concerns about me, a 5 year old. The central issue was my painting - the teacher showed my mother my peers' work - trees like green lollipops, suns like big smiling circles, then mine, areas of green, blue, black lines. My mother started laughing which concerned my teacher who told her she was worried I was retarded. My mother said "Johnny, what is this?" I said "It's a map. These are fields, these are mountains, these are roads and that's a lake!" End of parent-teacher conference, start of a lifelong love of maps.