I love making maps. I will find any excuse to make a map for a project, no matter how small or unmapworthy. This can be depressing, because I cannot draw worth a fetid dingo’s kidney. But I just finished reading The Hobbit last week and I adore Tolkien’s maps. So I thought I would try to do something a little like that, with lots of shaded mountains and squiggly little rivers.
I don’t have any project in mind for this, though I’m getting ideas. I imagine lighthouses on those lonely peninsulas and a good, though not kind, recluse out on the island. Shipping lanes crossing the sea, imperiled by rocks and a giant octopus. Secret meetings occurring in that little circle of tufty grass amid the southwestern forests. And a spring, fed by underground run-off from the lake, where a small community, perhaps a monastery, seeks shelter in a troubled world.
Did I mention, I love maps?