This Offbeat Life
New Economy Cooking
Backpacking by Bus

story, Big-Ass map & photographs by Leslie Strom
Toting, copying, filing, griping and arranging by Dave McBee

WHY I DECIDED TO MAKE AN ENORMOUS MAP

I often think I should start a whole department for Get Lost magazine called "Big Fat Lies I Tell People." I first learned the leverage of a great-sounding lie from my old friend Margaret VanderWaerden, who, years ago was an avid bike tourist who sometimes enjoyed company on her bike rides, even my peculiar version of it. She would show me a map where the area in question was about the size of a postage stamp, point to a blue hair-fine thread of a line next to some obscure state highway and say, "Look, it's a river grade! Easy ride." And I'd wind up in Rainy Pass high in the Cascade mountains wishing for a lightning bolt to put me out of my oxygen-deprived misery. So now whenever I hear the words "river grade" I search out a topo map. I'll probably still go, but I want to know what fresh hell I'm heading into.

The Chesapeake & Ohio Canal towpath runs 184 miles up the Potomac from Washington DC to Cumberland, MD. The National Parks Department has made this area into a contiguous and continuous skinny park on the Maryland side. Their maps are suspiciously devoid of topography, and I sure don't fall for that "Look, it's a river grade!" trick the way I used to. So I decided to make a map of grand magnitude, by sticking a bunch of USGS quad maps together.

Delorme mapping company has a giant globe in the Maine woods called "Eartha" which rotates in its shining modern gift box of an enclosure. It's 41 feet in diameter, biggest in the world. I wondered how big a globe it would be if they had used quadrant maps instead of satellite shots like we were about to do. (Quick figure... quads are at 1:24,000 scale, and Eartha is at 1:1,000,000 scale, so our globe would be 1,715 feet in diameter.) And I wondered if the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal in DC / Maryland / West Virginia / Virginia would fit on my wall. We're not talking a whole state or anything, just 184 miles of meandering Potomac river.

Desire for a good map of the C&O Canal and towpath... Look, it's a river grade! caused me to lie outrageously to Get Lost's own Dave McBee. To make a big-ass map out of USGS quadrants, I needed help. The Seattle Public Library has a complete (if a little outdated) set of maps for the whole USA. It might take an hour to collect and copy the maps, I said.

HOW WE MADE AN ENORMOUS MAP AND NAMED IT SOMETHING SILLY

(PS - This could have been done much faster with two DeLorme Maryland atlases and it would have fit on a wall. Don't tell McBee.)

First we had to fish the maps out of the various state drawers which took an hour. Then we had to photocopy the Potomac bits onto 11x17 paper. I don't know about the library in your town, but the copiers at ours get a lot of use and competition gets hot. Instead of strong-arming little kids to drop their History of the Oregon Trail books, we bundled up the nearly 40 maps, checked them out from a very tolerant reference desk person, hied to the local Kinkos and $11 later had a stack of about 150 quadrant quadrants (each quad map can be copied in four passes) that only ("only..." hahaha...) needed to spliced together later. When McBee finally departed with a sneer at my estimating abilities, it was three hours gone by.

So I went home with my giant copier-warm stack of map bits, anticipating another grand project on par with the Visible horse I assembled last fall, which is sort of like the Visible man models with the skeleton and innards we did in junior high biology. And so was spawned "Potomaca." I couldn't make it spin like DeLorme's Eartha, but I could sure make this impressive thing that would wow my friends and assure me that no one would ever shine me on about kayaking, biking or hiking a "river grade" in THAT neck of the woods.

YOUR CAN MAKE YOUR OWN EPIC MAP AND NAME IT SOMETHING SILLY

MATERIALS

• Large cutting board or cardboard thing
• Long metal ruler with a cork back
• Exacto blades (lots of them) and a handle
• masking or drafting tape (low tack)
• Scotch tape
• Maps

MAP COMPONENTS

A good choice would be a river, highway or other route that's likely to fit on your wall. I've noticed that DeLorme state map books are scaled to make a map that fits an 8 foot high wall that you may have at home. Get two books to cut up for your mosaic. You can also photocopy the pages of your book and reduce them a certain percentage all the same, and you'll end up with a smaller Big-Ass map. This might actually work for you better, though if you're using USGS maps the smallest type is already pretty small. Test the concept first. I did it once with quad maps at half size for the whole John Wayne Iron Horse trail that goes across the state of Washington.)

If you photocopy the maps, be sure to give yourself 2 sides with matchlines to other quadrants, and some overlap to the adjacent maps. Close the lid on the copier so there is no distortion in the shape of the map.

FOOLPROOF SPLICING TECHNIQUE

I learned to do this in college, so pay attention.

1. Align - lay the two untrimmed pieces so they overlap and align them as exactly as you can.

2. Tape - Using masking tape (stick it on your clothing and pull off a little lint, this will unstickify the tape so it won't pull the paper apart later) carefully tape the two maps together on the joint on the FRONT of the map.

3. Cut - with a cork-backed straightedge and exacto, cut through both pieces in one cut.

4. Toss the bits - Discard the short ends.

5. Tape again - Use drafting tape or fuzzy masking tape and tape the matching pieces together. They should butt together perfectly.

6. Flip.

7. Tape it yet again - tape all along the seam with permanent transparent tape.

8. Flip and peel - Flip your map to the front and remove your temporary masking tape. Ta-daaah.

Do this a couple hundred more times to complete your epic map.

Name it something that sounds like a Japanese movie monster. "Columbinator," for instance, would be a good name for a map of the Columbia river.

DISPLAYING YOUR BIG-ASS MAP

Because I failed to estimate the finished size before I embarked on the project, I forgot to book a high school gym in order to hang it in one piece. However, I did build the thing in quadrants and horizontal strips so it can all be rolled up and carried to a likely large floor for temporary viewing.

CARE AND STORAGE OF YOUR BIG-ASS MAP

Don't ask me. I'm only good for getting you INTO trouble.

Leslie Strom shows no restraint in her quest for epic projects. This affinity for such things will last as long as there are people like McBee to dupe into being accessory.