Mapping Memories

I’ve never had a good long term memory. It’s not like I forget what I’ve done, but I don’t remember things as vividly as a lot of people describe. I’m only a year out of university but if you asked me what classes I took or what projects I worked on in my last semester, well… I’d be hard pressed to come up with much. My sister and dad have expressed similar feelings, maybe it runs in the family.

Everyone looks for ways to remember things. My grandfather kept a journal for longer than I knew him, and my mom and sister put together calendars every year filled with pictures from both sides of our extended families. Photo albums, letters, scrapbooks; they all help us remember what we’ve done and who we’ve spent our time with. I’ve tried a lot of these methods, but most recently I’ve tried making trail maps.

My First Map: Functional but certainly not pretty

Learning to make maps was originally purely functional. I wanted to explore places that didn’t have good maps, and going out into the backcountry without a map is a great way to end up lost. But I also found myself looking at maps for completed trips, filing them away on my bookshelf instead of throwing them out. I can see the topology of the trails I’ve hiked and the coves I’ve paddled into. Much of a trips memories for me are the views and the physical exertion, both of which I am reminded of when looking back at maps. The steepness of that one hill or the view from the ridge are captured well for me by the medium.

A map I made before hiking Mount Matthews

It was then a very exciting discovery for me when I moved to New Zealand and discovered just how much map data the NZ government provides to the public. Elevation models, groundcover, rivers and streams; all ready to be imported into your favourite GIS system free of charge. I look forward to making more maps and planning more trips. And I look forward to keeping those maps as treasured records of those experiences.

The final version of my Mt Matthews map, With added details and notes I took