Sector Map

I kept switching sectors, so I decided to map it in order to force myself to stick to one spot. I was not entirely sure how to go about making an accurate map - I hardly knew how to use a compass. After some experimentation and a crash course on Medieval cartography, I chose the trees that would serve as my boundary lines. After I put in a declination of 8 degrees into the compass, the process went like this: I would stand at one point on my map, take a compass bearing, draw that point on graph paper, take a protractor and draw a line that went the angle of the bearing from the vertical lines on the graph (North), and then take steps with my 10.5 inch shoe to measure the distance to the next point. I knew it would take me a long while, but I was not expecting hours to fly by with out my noticing.

Mapping is meditative work. It is probably no coincidence the word mapping is so linguistically close to napping. I discovered they are roughly the same thing.

I came mostly with the intention of creating an accurate diagram of my sector, but that became secondary. Because most of my mind was distracted, I think I discovered what Dillard meant by "seeing", except only in my peripheral vision. A deer at one point, came so close to me that once I'd finally processed the being standing in front of me, I thought I'd fallen asleep and had a dream.

Chipmunks and field mice turned from everyday nuisances to a source of awe I don't think I've shown them since I was under 4 feet. Considering I spent most of the day standing in basically a swamp and doing math, I can say I rather enjoyed myself.

After a couple days, I had an accurate(ish) map that included all the plants I could find there and identify. Sitting on the rocks in my sector with a pile of field guides was probably my favorite part. A friend passed away some years ago from cancer, and she put a large portion of her botany library in her will for us. I think her favorites were ferns, as we now have a shelf full of fern related books, all full of her penciled in notes, which besides being super helpful are nostalgic and a nice reminder of her. There was an awful lot of moss I was too tired to get into, but someday I'd like to learn to identify mosses. Mosses and pines are some of my favorite things.

Then, using Tolkien's map of Mordor as inspiration, I traced the map onto a bigger sheet of paper, so I could draw different plants to scale in the margins. Here is the end result: