Tag: Signals

All my life I have had fascination with maps and cartography (the mapmaker’s art). I have a geography degree that hasn’t earned me a cent, but I don’t care.

As a child, I would pore over atlases and maps with their linear representations of different parts of the world – seas, mountains, rivers ,deserts, towns and cities.

I would get lost in those pages and charts, but a good lost, y’know ?

I took this photo of an old map on my recent travels in Scotland. It depicts Fife and its coastline. Heights in feet, depths in fathoms, as it was, but nothing out of the ordinary.

Look closer.

It’s really a guide to the lost and endangered, or maybe a series of warnings to prevent yourself getting in those predicaments in the first place.

Beacons, lights, storm signals and lifeboats(!) and their locations.

Because (and I say this from harsh experience),when you are truly lost (the bad lost), you need external direction and you must heed the signals that you receive from around you.

You might have a moral compass, but you ,alone, cannot be your own map…