I have always had the desire to see the world.  This started as a young child when I would listen to my grandmother’s stories of her travels.  My grandmother was a traveler and artist and progressive for her time.  She visited the seven wonders of the world.  I remember her telling me about a hotel that was an actual tree house where she stayed in Africa,  and about her visit to the Taj Mahal in India.  She traveled every year to Arizona and when she returned would tell me about the beautiful rocks and colors in the landscapes there.  Outside, a cold and dreary Michigan winter day would be gray with flecks of blue and brown.  My grandmother would tell tales of  places where the sun was shining and hot in the winter.  I admired her ability to compartmentalize and relay these tales over Sunday dinner while snow fell outside the window.  I caught the travel bug while dining surreptitiously on pot roast with carrots and potatoes on these wintry Sundays after church, before I was told to go upstairs to study. 

My parents also fueled the interest in the world outside our windows. My mother was a teacher and every road trip was a teachable moment and an opportunity to learn about new places.  My father was a physicist and encouraged us to have boundless curiousity about all matters of matter, so to speak. He also insisted that we end every debate with a trip to the study to consult the Encyclopedia. How marvelous it is to have Wikipedia, the fount of all knowledge (albeit  occasional misinformation) at our disposal today.  

After college, I had a couple of jobs which fueled the wanderlust even more.  One was a job in western Colorado which involved pinpointing water sources using USGS quadrangle maps and satellite images to locate springs and intermittent streams.  My job was to field check the locations and if I encountered real water, to test it for nitrates and sulfates, and also measure the pH.  It was a fun job, taking me to places like the Black Canyon of the Gunnison where I would eat lunch and bask in the glory of the scenery. Following that summer of bopping around Colorado, I worked as a cartographer for a small mapping company in Minneapolis.  It was a far cry from field work in the mountains, but I learned to hand-scribe contour maps and within a year we were converting those same photo-rendered maps to digital elevation models, using early scanning technologies.  I loved the maps, especially the ones from different places in the world.  

Studying geology and mapping afforded me the opportunity to see some interesting parts of the country and world.  I have hiked in most of the mountain ranges in the US, set foot on seven continents, and visited forty-nine of the nifty-fifty United States, (with apologies to Delaware). I have also seen obscure places such as an elaborate Grotto in western Iowa, the Corn Palace in South Dakota, and Prairie Dog town in Lubbock, Texas. While making maps in Texas, I found out there is a city named Ding Dong, in of all places, Bell County.   There is a tiny little town named Unadilla in Michigan and a place called Pike’s Peak in Iowa, the original Pike’s Peak, discovered presumably, by John Muir, on his way to the real one in Colorado.  There is a road in Houston, a notorious speed trap, perhaps the only road in the city where people obey the speed limit, named Buffalo Speedway.  Thinking about all of these fun and interesting places makes me thankful to the person who thought of the clever names and who also worked meticulously to put them on the map.

Not everywhere is picturesque or delightful to visit but the maps are always beautiful pictures of possibility.  Even in the most desolate or destitute places I have found something  to appreciate, whether it is a planned or unplanned stop. My grandmother used to tell me “the world is your oyster”. Well I am happy to report that indeed it is. I am very grateful to have seen much of it, am thankful to God for the beauty of the world around me, and glad I have had a chance to be guided by many maps and fellow mapmakers along the way.

(lwr Oct 2, 2017)