Waiting and sacrifice can gift us unknown treasures.

I drew maps when I was a young child. Lots of maps. Adventure ones.
They are all lost now.


Sitting at a desk in my room with only paper, pencil and my imagination, I created maps of islands surrounded by ocean. The ships would be drawn, then the dotted lines leading out from the shore and into the blue-green wilderness of the unknown.


Then I would write the stories of how my hero and heroine’s adventures led to the discovery of long buried secrets which they would dig up around the lonely islands. No other humans in sight, just the characters who lived on the pages of small self-made books bound with string. Their longing for discovery of something to return with, and pore over in their attempts to know the secret of its past, was the central theme.


My yearning for intrigue found its place upon the pages of the stories which I brought to life from my ten-year-old mind.


Somewhere along the way I lost that yearning for storytelling, writing and drawing. Year by year I felt it slip further away as the reality of life gripped me tightly.


It took about 30 years until I allowed that grip to loosen.


Life has a way of doing that; of distracting you as an adult. Fortunate are those who decide not to let that happen and who take the road less trodden. Then again, every road we take will have its price; sacrifices will always need to be made.


Life is about timing. Always timing. And that is not an easy lesson for we mere mortals to learn.


While I don’t draw maps anymore, I do write. And the sacrifices that I made along the way to wait for this time to arrive, have been a gift that I could never have acquired had I taken the alternative route.


From one of the earliest maps we have of ancient Babylon through to today’s modern incarnations - albeit less pleasingly aesthetic to the eye - maps will continue to be a source of intrigue and benefit to us all as we navigate historical timelines and contemporary places.