On Cartophilia

This is an entry for the Ecotone wiki topic on maps and place.

Maps etch my life. The tale goes that I learned to read from maps, associating familiar placenames with words on the mapsheet. When growing up I prized my map collection. I would become lost in the world of maps: one game I would play would be to take a street map, start at some intersection, and trace sequences of turns—left-right-left-right—and see where I ended up on the map. Exploring that way was a lot less work than trying the experiment on foot. Another time I went to the long-gone Berkeley store Lucas Books, which had an excellent natural history section, to buy my first USGS topographic maps: I wanted to seek the source of Wildcat Creek in nearby Tilden Park, an expedition I would think about but never undertake.

Much later on I would become a geographer, and dabble in making my own maps. My thesis was on how to make maps of the distribution of animal species. There I glimpsed a bit of the mystical nature of maps, for who can ever be certain where a species isn’t? All territories look vast when you start to make your own maps.

Maps are talismans. Even a map of the most familiar of spaces reveals new things: a forgotten street name, an unvisited urban park. A map collection, small or large, is a blessed thing, for it promises a feast for the imagination. Adventures to unknown places beckon, whether they are in the same town, county, or in the antipodes. And every once in a while we take the map in hand and follow the paths to that beckoning place.