Map of the World

So far it's another mild winter but winter is dreary and I'm already looking forward to spring. Spring  is hopeful, spring is warm and spring is the time for a road trip. One of the best local road trips is Highway 6 that runs parallel to the Pennsylvania - New York state line. Though I'm told these days the traffic isn't as leisurely and many of the small sleepy towns have been shaken awake from the boom in the natural gas industry. Pennsylvania has plenty of other roads that are scenic, challenging and maybe just a little dangerous. I'm looking at a road map right now.

For me there is no substitute for the paper map. My two sons tease me for not embracing things like a GPS. "Gee Dad -you're so 20th century" or "have you always be electronically Amish?"  are common quips. They have both wondered aloud if I'm a recreation Luddite. It's not that a GPS isn't pretty cool but it only focuses on the worm's eye view of getting from point A to point B. That feels limiting, if  I'm out to satisfy a bit of wonderlust  I don't want to be claustrophobicly corralled on that one chosen path.

A real map says adventure and like any adventure things can go wrong, new courses have to calculated on the fly. And seriously -getting lost on the way could end up being the best part.  I can not lie, I like big maps.

When I was in grade school there was a world map that had several grey patches of land that was still unexplored. Parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, the interior of the Amazon rain forest and most of the island of Papua New Guinea were all in grey. As a kid that map was a source of endless fascination. They were the last scraps of land that hadn't yet be photographed by satellites or mapped by the great voyages and expeditions of discovery. They were the places of mystery between Columbus and the space age.


The historic voyages of discovery were an odd mixture of ancient fear and ignorance couple with the cutting edge science of its time. The first Portuguese to  reach the Cape of Good Hope in Africa where afraid they would become hopelessly lost when they couldn't see the North Star as they traveled south of the equator.  Another example was Captain Cook's expedition to Tahiti in 1766. He had a two part mission, one was to observe the transit of Venus and the other was to search for an unknown continent believed to be between Australia and South America. So in the late 1700's scientists could use measurements from the transit of Venus to calculate an accurate distance between the Sun and the Earth but even the most advanced geographer of that time could only guess to how much dry land there was on the planet. So a truly accurate world map has only existed for about two hundred years.

Maps were that big braggadocios statement of how much the cartographer knew or thought he knew. In the 1600's maps were floridly decorated, sometimes comically wrong and along the edges were warnings like "there be monsters here". Which really meant they had no idea what was there but for sailors and explorers an image of a giant squid eating the crew of a ship was much more comforting than a big blank space with a question mark.

So spring is less than 60 days away. In our household we celebrate the first day of spring on March 1st or Saint David's day. And by then I should be ready for the first road trip of 2013. Like Ulysses I will learn that the best way to appreciate home is to leave it. Unlike Ulysses, I promise my wife that I'll be gone only a couple of days and not twenty years.

While I'm putting this post together, my oldest boy is wondering who is Jane Siberry? The little Youtube clip I'm using is classically the 1980's at all its best and worse. Normally Jane Siberry is known for her slightly folky-pop performances but in this clip I think she is trying to be Canada's answer to Laurie Anderson. My son is confused and wants to know who is Laurie Anderson?

Until next time and may there be an adventure waiting for you.