Field Reflection #5: Mapping

         A map gives a miniature picture of a very large space. A map is a guide to a space you have not encountered before. It is a direction finder and a dependable way to take a journey. Maps show special relationships between different points, and show the importance of places. People develop a sense of place through experience and knowledge of a particular area.

            I arrived to the lab with an idea in mind. We were to create a map of a place that has meaning to us. The weekend before lab I had been in Barriere at a friend’s ranch. I usually spend as much time as I can there, training the young horses, or just enjoying a trail ride. There are many trails and logging roads that I have spent a countless number of hours, both with friends and alone. I appreciate the moments that I have alone. Just me, the horse, and the bush. In belonging to a landscape, one feels a rightness, an at homeness, a knitting of self and world. This condition of clarity and focus, this being fully present, is mindfulness. There is only one world, and we participate in it here and now, in our flesh and our place. When I am alone on a trail ride, I am at peace. I find this peace on the many wonderful trails up Barriere Lakes road. A twenty-minute drive out of town and into the mountains. Many of the trails around the area consist of old logging roads, a cross country skiing park, and little goat trails through the woods made by other horsemen and women.

            I sat at a lab bench with a tea in my left hand and a scone in the other. I stared down at a blank piece of paper and made a mental sketch of how I was going to configure my map. As I munched and sipped, ideas sprang out of my mind and onto my paper. I set down my tea, grabbed a pencil and began my journey up Barriere Lakes road. As I sketched, my entire surroundings change from the lab, and slowly I found myself in the barn tacking up. With each stroke of my pencil I continued to sketch the driveway to the road and then the road to one of the trail heads. I imagined myself riding down a narrow path and jumping logs that lay across the trail. I enjoyed re-enacting my rides in my head. I liked how Sheila Harrington describes nature and mapping in this week’s readings; she goes on to say that nature is inexplicably woven together to create an incredibly diverse and inherently connected whole Earth. How do we understand the web of life? Through an intimate love for our own home places we will find a link to each other and to the Earth. For we are part of nature. With maps, we are able to express and show the importance of places that make us feel an at homeness and put us in the present.

Words: 510

References:  

Harrington, S. (2000). Islands in the Salish Sea: A Community Atlas. Nanoose Bay: Heritage House Publishing.

Sanders, S. R. (1994). Staying put: Making a home in a restless world. Boston: Beacon Press.