I used to really hate maps. On road trips as a kid, I used to hate playing navigator and I hated looking at the road atlas. I feel like all of that changed when I read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Thorin's map in The Hobbit, the detailed maps in the appendices of Lord of the Rings were all so beautiful and artistic I felt that, unlike other maps I'd seen, they drew me into the world and gave me more character than a lot of authors are able to give in their maps or illustrations. They made me want to adventure and explore and see if the world around me had as much character as Tolkien seemed to believe it did. That got me into topography. Topography got me into backpacking. Backpacking had me wanting to make maps for myself to follow! To this day I map every hike I take and I try to make them as beautiful as the maps that first inspired me.
(I'm sorry for the punny title)
-Varda*
(Not really)
2 comments:
Hi Varda,
Thank you so much for sharing your personal experience, it is very beautiful and also inspiring. Like you, I used to greatly dislike maps. They were almost like pictures, but less interesting because they were not too easy for me to understand. It is not until recently that I began to understand and enjoy them. I find it very interesting that because of your early introduction to maps by Tolkien you now map all of the hikes that you take. That is what Tolkien would have wanted!
-Melian
First of all, I loved your title. I don't think you need to apologize for it, haha. Second, I really like your perceptive here on maps, because it lines up similarly with my own. Mine applies a little more to literature than maps in general. In all the books that I would read with maps, I honestly skipped over them because they never seemed to matter to me. They never affected the way I read the story. It was interesting when I learned that the mountains are incorrect with the way real geography works. However, for me, that doesn't take away from the "realness". Maybe because I'm no expert in geography... Anyways, my point is that I really enjoy looking at the map and I see it as art now, not just a suggestion for a tool for anyone who wants to see the layout of Tolkien's world.
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