The Dangerous Maps

Children are like those ancient mapmakers, the first cartographers trying to make sense of whatever new world they were exploring for the first time. The maps they drew so ridiculously wrong and ridiculously brave. Monsters live here! Don’t go any further or you’ll fall off the edge of the earth! Down this hole is Hell….

They sailed out onto uncharted oceans in fragile wooden boats or on foot into forests and plains ten thousand miles wide with nothing more than a few provisions, the wrong clothes, weapons they knew would be useless if they faced the monsters they believed were out there waiting to eat them; hope and curiosity the only things that kept them going.

The monsters we imagine as children are no less fearsome than the ones we encounter as adults. And as adults, the lands we have mapped are by now well traveled and for the most part safe.

Jonathan Carroll is the author of over 20 novels and short story collections. His latest novel “Bathing the Lion” is now available in trade paperback. If you liked this piece, there’s lots more on his monthly newsletter. You can subscribe here