On maps.

September 3, 2017

You can’t beat a good map.

They’ve always intrigued me. I used to like them purely for their aesthetic. If I stumbled across a vintage map in a second hand shop, I couldn’t leave without it tucked into my bag. But I’ve also discovered the beauty of the mystery they hold, the endless secrets within their folds. Walks, routes, landscapes; places to be explored and discovered. They give you the barest, most practical details about an area; much like (stereotype alert) the answer you get when you ask a man to describe what someone was wearing. It’s an invitation to the curious.

I’m sure that if you know how to read them, a map can tell you a lot. But the basic essentials of footpaths and contours are enough to satisfy me. Even then, there is some pleasure in the surprise of an unexpected landscape because you’ve misread the contour lines in your impatience to get out the door.

You might know where footpaths begin and end, and how steep they are. You might even be able to tell where interesting caves and historical sites are – if you can decipher the baffling little drawings.

But you won’t know what colours and textures you’ll find, whether you’ll be surrounded by a riot of purples or pale creamy yellows and deep ochre. A map can’t describe the light, what brushstrokes the clouds will paint across the sky. They can’t tell you what the landscape is going to make you feel when you are standing in the middle of it. They don’t know whether you’ll be the only soul in sight, or whether you’ll share a field with a bunch of curious sheep.

These things change endlessly; from day to day, season to season, year to year. Only your feet can tell you what it will be like today.