Cold Splinters

“This is a scan of a slide that I took while on an outdoor survival camp in February of 1978 up north of Thunder Bay, Ontario. It was -30°C on our camp out night…We slept in quinzhees.” *

I guess at that temperature (-22°F), all you can do is think warm thoughts…

MP3: Delorean – Stay close

Past winners of American mapmaking’s most prestigious honor, the “Best of Show” award at the annual competition of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society, include National Geographic, the CIA Cartography Center, and the U.S. Census Bureau. But earlier this year, the 38^th annual Best of Show award went to a map created by Imus Geographics—which, according to Slate.com, is “basically one dude named David Imus working in a farmhouse outside Eugene, Ore.” The map took Imus 6,000 hours (seven days a week for two years straight) to complete.

Read more about Imus’ map here, which includes relief shading instead of the standard hypsometric tinting (darker colors for lower elevations, lighter colors for higher altitudes). This gives the map a more accurate portrait of America’s terrain.

After being laid off from his job in April 2011, Kolby Kirk (The Hike Guy) decided he would attempt to complete as much as he could of the 2,650-mile PCT. Starting at the Mexican border near Campo, California, he walked for 159 days and nearly 1,700 miles. In that time, Kolby wrote 850 pages in his journals. a few of which he has started to scan for a major dose of visual stimulation. The pages are filled with charts, drawings, receipts, beer labels (nice), stamps, crushed poison oak, and much much more. He’s even added descriptions under a few of the pages to give us better insight on the process:

“Hiking journals shouldn’t be clean unless your hike is clean. In this example, you can see dirt and smears of ink, a subtle clue that I was grimy and had just applied insect repellant to my hands. At the time, I was a little upset that the chemicals had smudged the ink, but I have learned to appreciate that my journal records more than just the words I print on it, for better or worse.”

Kolby is now working on a book that will help hikers and travelers start and retain their own journals while on the trail. And after looking at his Flickr for the last couple of hours, that is certainly a book I’d read.

Congratulations, Kolby.

Thank you to BMC for turning us onto Canadian artist, Ted Harrison. The paintings above are from his 1989 book, A Northern Alphabet.

As ACL pointed out this morning, the new Schoolhouse Electric & Supply Co. website launched today. If you’re like me, you’re probably going to end up ordering their USA Topo Map by the end of the day for $40. Though I’ve been lucky enough to be traveling back and forth from Oregon these last few months, I don’t know if I’m quite ready to post a map of that wonderful state on the walls of my east coast apartment. In time…

Thank you, thank you Jay Carroll for posting these David Fowler paintings. I have not stopped staring at the New Mexico painter’s work for the past couple of days. Enjoy a few more after the jump.

Any of you down there in New Mexico?

(more…)

Field Illustrator Cathy Johnson wrote and illustrated a book for the Sierra Club in 1990 titled Sketching in Nature. In researching Johnson’s work a bit more, I happened across her huge archive of work on flickr and had to share. Incredible detail with very minimal marks, it’s hard not to love the attention she pays to design and text on each hand-bound sketchbook page. Littered throughout her flickr are photos of her repurposed mini watercolor “field boxes” for work outdoors. It’s amazing to see how she curates what materials to bring to each spot.

Good morning!

Cruise eBay and buy up all of these vintage National Park View-master slides in all of their saturated Kodachrome goodness. And if the throwback handheld viewer doesn’t suit your fancy, get the grown-up version here.

(Thx AAPC. More here.)

I’m not sure how I came upon Jess DeSelm’s blog, Sketches Now & Then, but I suppose that’s the way the Internet works. Lots of wormholes to follow. There’s not too much one can say here as there’s little info about Jess on the site, and I guess that’s what makes her site so wonderful. (Love the “Alone In The Wilderness – Dick Pernicky.”) She lived in Boulder (maybe she still does?), and from Oct 2007 – Jan 2010, she scanned her journal onto the world wide web for all of us to see. Thanks, Jess.

Enjoy her sketches and writings here.