Maps and Metaphysics

Aitkin, MN (August 17)-- Richard left from Brainerd and we are down to two. Tomorrow I have a 27 mile day (during which I will hopefully be adequately hydrated (Future Mac: he was)) but that's looking like the furthest anyone will have to go for a while--it's tough to say because the river is straightening (or will begin to straighten around Brainerd) so much that each map only reveals one or two days' worth of distance, and we don't like to get more than a map or two ahead of ourselves. We have 3 sets of nine maps each from the Minnesota DNR that we keep in Eve's MacBook Pro box (get it?), and being nerds we don't like to disturb the order of the maps (which on the first day of our possession of them I organized into sets) until we need to. The maps are great, running from Itasca to the Wisconsin border (at which point we will switch to a booklet of more highly detailed maps, also from the MN DNR, which go to the Iowa border--typical bureaucratic incompetence government freedom fuck terrorists sorry about that)--they're pretty good for both navigating and for locating places to camp, with only one or two egregious and potentially life-threatening mistakes of the type I've grown accustomed to seeing from the mapmaking industry. Not to cast aspersions of incompetence on all cartographers, and aware as I am of the fact that realistically the maps are technically correct even when they don't match an amateur's ground-level estimations of how the map should look, but your field's got a ways to go in respect to, you know, what your job is.

It's a favorite activity of ours to examine the next day's map every evening as the sky dims, like old sailors or river dogs or mall rats (do there exist maps of malls in portable format, and if so, do bored housewives and teenagers study them or bring them home or leave them in their car or are they (the maps or, I suppose, the people) just like so many useless brochures or business cards or other pieces of paper with colors or words but that might as well be blank? If not, I suppose that latter analogy pretty solidly falls apart.), and to bask in the warmth of knowing exactly where you will be going tomorrow, which is something that excites the spirit so long as its different than where you went today (this latter condition explaining why so many workadays lead dismal disinterested lives, and I apologize if that's mean but come on, it can't exactly be surprising at this point for someone who isn't at the moment workaday to lament the fate of those who are, as though they lack the capacity to do it themselves, and after reflection upon that last clause I think I actually have changed my mind and retract said lamentation, and if you have your workaday fate you don't need me to complain about it for you). It's a nice feeling, especially, and maybe this is contrary to the spirit of adventure, but especially when you end up following the right trail.