By: Blonde Two
The household Blonde Two has recently inherited a rather thrilling cupboard. Cupboards, you might be forgiven for suggesting, are not usually exciting but this one has a rather Blondish history as it has always been known as “The Map Cupboard”. In its heyday The Map Cupboard was stashed full of maps of all shapes, sizes and ages. Most of those maps are now in the loft, they are not very useful but to me, throwing a map away seems akin to using the family bible as a garden shed doorstop. The Map Cupboard is slowly being restocked by a new collection for a new generation.It doesn’t look very full yet but that is partly because my five current Dartmoor maps (all with varying numbers of holes in them) live in strategic “in case of emergency” positions around the house.
One day Blonde One and I will have a Map Room furnished with carefully indexed map cupboards, a large map sized table, a Dartmoor map on the wall showing all tor conquests, a few select walking books (including Langmuir which I have read from cover to cover twice) and useful hooks to hang compasses on. It will be warm and have excellent lighting, the windows will open onto Dartmoor and we will be able to hear Skylarks and smell peat. It will be lovely and we will invite you all to visit (although maybe not all at once).
The Map Cupboard is just the first step on the journey towards The Map Room. Tomorrow I am going to tell you about one map that was allowed to stay in the Map Cupboard.
Does Peat mind you sniffing around him?
People pay good money for the experience!
boots – rucksacks – and now maps –
‘these things we have shored against our ruin’
(my turn for setting the quote of the week test)
apologies – not quite the exact quote but gives the flavour of the original . . .
T.S. Eliot – The Waste Land – I hadn’t read it before and found it difficult to follow but that line speaks volumes.
Agreed – throwing a map away is a not-so-small act of self-destruction: it is throwing away a part of one’s life and history (except, perhaps, petrol station/carhire/hotel chain flimsy paper versions showing little of use but with prominent displays of the locations of their offerings obliterating the very thing one is looking for!).
And after a century or two, people will find them and exclaim – was it really as lovely and interesting as that before ‘the . . . .’ arrived?
Gimmer, you are exactly right about maps. Their value is in the things that you are not looking for, the hidden valley, the odd field system, the strange stone.
I know what you mean, I’ve never thrown a map away yet! If anyone of my walking friends s wanting to get rid of some old maps, I take them off their hands. I love looking at them. My most used ones are on the bottom shelf of my bookcase and there is always at least one open on the table following someone’s blog journey.
The best tables are covered in maps. I hope that you have a Dartmoor one to follow our Blonde adventures.