Concartography (was: Unsolicited abuse)

On Thu, 13 May 1999, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Gary Shannon wrote:
> > Not so strange, really.  When I was a kid I used to love to draw maps of
> > imaginarey lands.  I still admire nicely done works of concartography.
>
> Me too.  In fact, I have a roughly-drawn, periodically revised, map of
> the Continent (the one continent on Terra Nova).  I wonder if many other
> conlangers/conculturers were the same way?
I started drawing maps several years before I began conlanging.  Like
my early conlanging, my early concartography was heavily influenced
by Tolkien.  Most of my maps from that period have the distinct style
of Tolkien's maps, or those drawn by his son Christopher for later
editions of the books.

I still get immense aesthetic pleasure from contemplating coastlines,
mountain ranges, and river systems.  (My current favourite coastline
is Brittany, although the Nova Scotia/New Brunswick coastline is also
rather lovely...)  My boyfriend is often amused to walk into a room and
find me sitting in a chair staring at our large Hammond desk atlas.

I'm itching to do a map of the region inhabited by the Tokana, but
first I have to settle the thorny question of exactly where they live.
I know it's somewhere along the Pacific Northwest Coast of North
America, between the Queen Charlotte Islands and the mouth of the
Columbia River - but I still can't decide exactly where...

Matt.