Details
I’ve always been enamored by maps, particularly old maps of familiar places. They are, for me, a look backwards into the past.
As a young guide, I found a map rolled up in the eaves of a trapper’s cabin in Alaska. Half a century ago, southwest Alaska was a very different place, and I was fascinated to find so many small and isolated villages that had since disappeared.
It was easy for me to imagine two trappers huddled over the map, examining it late into the night by the flickering light of a kerosene lamp. In my imagination I watched them tracing the region’s watersheds and mountain passes, looking for likely places to expand their trap line.
The map spoke to me.
I rolled the old map up in my rod tube and brought home with me at the end of the season.
Fifteen years later it was brought out and used as the backdrop in a still life painting that illustrated John Gierach’s closing column in the 1999 May/June issue of Fly Rod & Reel.
The essay I illustrated for John was about the importance of maps, and the role they play in a fisherman’s life. Little did I know, at the time, how important the map would become in my life. Since that first painting “Some Things Old, Some Things New – Maps”, the old map has been the background in no less than eight paintings… and I hope to incorporate it into many more.
