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Friday, April 11, 2008

Map Maker, Map Maker, Make Me A Map

When I was a kid, a playmate of mine insisted we play "treasure hunt." For three-year olds, it was a rather complex game. First, my friend and I acquired a piece of paper and a marker from my mother. Then, with intense effort, my friend slowly drew one continuous looping line across the paper. His hand glided from the middle of the page to the upper right corner, then traveled down to the left on a dizzying path which crossed the paper's center point at least twice before arriving at its final destination. He marked the end point with a large X.

"Here is the treasure," he told me. "We have to follow this map to find it."

I put my head next to his and we studied the map, glancing up at the wilderness that once was my kitchen so as to orient ourselves.

"See, we are here," I said pointing to a spot on the scribbled paper. "We have to go this way to start."

And we took off. Each footstep was taken with extremely slow care and confirmed immediately afterwards by glancing at the map. We argued over which way to go when we reached the mountain of the stairs. Did the map suggest we proceed upwards, or was it suggesting that the treasure was underneath? Did we need to abandon the map in order to overcome certain obstacles in our path? If so, how would we rediscover our route?

When I was seven years old, my dad took me for a walk on the paved paths that wound through the woods in our neighborhood. As we approached a fork in the path, I considered the possibilities. We could proceed to the right and attempt to conquer the towering mountain ahead, or we could swerve downhill to the left. We chose the first option, and as I approached the crest of the hill, I felt I was entering a new civilization. What were these structures before me? Houses never before seen. It was a new city, a different world. We had taken a shortcut that led to the end of the street directly behind our own. I had seen these houses a dozen times before, but approaching from the forest, I felt I was discovering a previously uncharted land.

In fourth grade, I decided that there was no point to continuing my studies. My ability to be amazed by the familiar was dwindling. My teacher told me that all the oceans, seas, and continents had been explored. There were islands smaller than our town, far away from any civilized areas, where explorers had charted topography and recorded the activities of wildlife. There was nothing left to explore. That era had ended long ago. I was born in the wrong century.

When I was nineteen years old, I set off on a journey around the world. The ship which carried my "floating university" was in constant motion, always bound for some point east. I sat on the rear deck and stared off into the western sky. Surrounded by blue waves, I scoured the horizon for other ships, searched the water's surface for whales and sharks, and as the sun dipped below the edge of the sea, I turned my gaze upward to concentrate on the previously unseen constellations that hovered above me. This was exploration. Yes, maybe everything I saw already appeared in some book, some essay, someone's research journal, but none of it had ever been experienced this way before. That was all mine.

There are two kinds of exploration. There is the "heroic exploration" of Magellan and Columbus. Today, that kind of activity is practiced by scientists and researchers, studying every smaller or ever larger bodies in hopes of finding something previously unknown.* But there is also the "cogitative exploration" of those who hunt for experience, for the opportunity to reflect, for the feeling of fanatical satisfaction that arises from seeing/feeling/hearing/doing something for the first time and loving it.

Maybe all the maps of the world have already been made. I might never gaze down from a mountain peak and see an uncharted territory below me. But there is plenty left to explore. Fourth grade teachers don't know everything.







*Berry, Wendell. Life Is A Miracle, Counterpoint, Washington, DC, 2000. p. 55.