Maps to Treasure

hmmm.....the moment I typed that title, I realized it could have a double meaning!

I do treasure my maps. One of the entries in my book, Seasons of Grace, begins "I am in love with maps. I belong to the National Geographic Society; my bedroom is decorated with several years' worth of calendars featuring antique map prints; and I even have a lampshade in a map motif. Cartographic renderings of places from Jamaica to Jerusalem tease my imagination as I gaze on them while riding my stationary exercise bike, going nowhere fast...."

But maps can also lead us to treasure... figurative if not literal. For me this is true whether they are maps of real places, like the BCAA maps we pick up when we take a road trip, or maps of the fictional worlds where we may read stories of Refreshment.

The colour cover image above, not as clear as I would like, is the slipcover of Brian Sibley & John Howe's wonderful renditions of Tolkien's Maps of Middle Earth, which my daughter presented to me as a birthday gift when we visited her at The Kilns in Oxford a couple of years ago. On that same trip we also visited the Mappa Mundi at Hereford Cathedral (and saw a genuine medieval chained library while we were at it.)

Another time, one Christmas I believe, my husband gave my Barbara Strachey's lovely Journeys of Frodo: an Atlas of JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. Sadly, I can find no images of it available online. But if you are really serious about both maps and Tolkien, check out the Middle Earth DEM Project. It is truly awe-inspiring.....!

Maps of course often figure prominently in stories-- a most notable example is Thorin's map in The Hobbit; and we can't forget the quintessential fictional map, the treasure map in RL Stevenson's Treasure Island.