MAPS

I developed an early interest in maps and used to spend hours poring over the old atlases stored in my parents’ glass-fronted bookcase. The world as presented between these pages was such a large and interesting place to explore. This interest was deepened by my hobby of the time of collecting stamps. My first stamp album had pages devoted to particular countries – a far cry from this one to hold first day covers.

I was intrigued by pictures of ancient maps, many of them decorated with fearsome looking beasts or strange people. Once we began studying maps at high school, I had cause to remember these ancient projections depicting how early travellers perceived the shapes of the different continents. What they did is marvellous, considering the instruments they had to hand.

I might have mentioned somewhere before the laughable fact that in my first year of high school geography, we actually had to learn six proofs that the earth was round!

My father had an aerial photograph of his farm which intrigued me no end. I also had great fun perusing his topographical maps of the area where we lived: finding the roads, rivers, as well as looking for farms and signs of human habitation. My father taught me the rudiments of reading contour lines so that I could recognise hills and mountains. This was a useful skill which helped me to assist hikers plan their routes along the Natal Drakensberg when I held the position of Routes and Rights of Way on the university Mountain Club committee during my second year there.

I still have the atlas I purchased for my Geography I course which I used to ‘read’ as I ‘read’ dictionaries, becoming side-tracked by the names of places and looking up where different events in either history or fiction had played out.

Maps come in all sizes and shapes these days and are also widely used for decorative purposes. For fun too: this is a jigsaw puzzle of a story map of Ireland from 1935.

Atlas. How interesting is it that a book containing maps should be called an atlas. Atlas was one of the Titans sentenced by Zeus for his defiance. As his punishment, he was required to hold up the heavens so that they wouldn’t destroy Earth by falling on it. The next time you are feeling weary and as if you have the world on your shoulders, think of Titan – I don’t think his sentence has an end date …