rainbows in curved air (or curves in rainbowed air)

Maps & Atlases, Sextants & Cutlasses

A rough, hand-drawn, map is fine from where I am standing. You know where you can stick your Sat Navs. However, when you get down to maps that show infinite detail, it is more important to ponder what they do not show. Imagination is squeezed right out.

I really think this is such an important point so stay with me here as a rant is coming right up.

You have to consider the purpose of maps. Is it for travel? Military use? Showing all the straight tar macadam roads that General Whatever can zoom his redcoats on, to show the superiority of the English Overlords to his remote subjects!

Due to all this exact science & exact measurement, we are frightened to make our own amateur attempts at maps, perhaps now is the time to have a look at this as Sat Navs are busy sending drivers to their deaths in foggy lochs.

Recent research on my part has failed to find maps showing details that I need. I want a map that exclaims in huge letters: ‘Here Be Dragons’ & depending on my mood that day, I may investigate or not.

I want a Robert Louis Stevenson map showing all the buried treasure & one that gives approximate locations for all the rainbows & the pots of gold. I want a map full of wonder & imagination, I do not want a graphical representation of all the roads I need to get me in, out & through an area. I want a map that takes me right in, into the core, full of depth & pleasure.

I want maps that don’t just stay on the earth’s surface, I want to go deep underground, I want to climb trees, I want to know what animals, birds & flowers I will see, what I will hear, what I will feel & smell. I want maps that take in the sky, the burns & the rivers & have lots of pretty pictures on them.

I want maps that will tell you what you will see from e.g. Duncryn Hill or the Cochno/Jaw lochs.