The golden age of exploration is no more. People are not going to discover great landmasses and put them on the map.
In one of Benedict Allen’s books his gives thought to this, and looking over his website the other day, I noticed he still gives thought to it.
Benedict is an explorer in a manner I will never be, but now it is about scale not absolutes. His scale is simply larger than mine.
There are places in the world where the maps lack a certain detail but more often than not it is because there is not a lot to map.
It might be possible to tread where no human has trodden but it is now on the micro not the macro level.
In England the OS mapping service ensures every square inch is accounted for and often named.
Via google earth I can zoom pan and pry, retracing expeditions of yore and following adventurers today.
It is all very cozy but it divorces me from the reality, I can be lulled into the delusion I have explored these places.
The truth is, someone else has, not me.
The Royal Geographical Society will not be handing over any gold medals when I reach my walking destination. There will be no biding war for my journal.
Even when the world was composed of blanks filling them in was an occupation of a very few, and a good many of them lost their lives in doing so.
It was never a mass participation sport.
Some people push back the boundaries of human achievement, some increasingly ludicrous such as the “firsts” Everest seems to endlessly attract (I await the first ascent by pogo-stick).
I will never climb Everest, but I will reach my highest point and in almost every significant way that is more important to me than any number of Everest ascents I will never do. I believe Benedict considers these adventurer’s athletes, not explorers. Certainly it is what he considers the people trekking to the Poles etc.
It is an interesting viewpoint and has merit, but the term exploration can be expanded and contracted to cover and exclude almost anything you wish.
Benedict would not consider me an explorer and really you have to agree on almost every level but one. I am discovering things for myself in a continual exploration of the world and the people around me.
It is a mindset and one that should be nurtured and expanded upon.
Until close enough to touch something and gain an understanding I cannot really say I have begun to explore it.
To say there is nothing left to explore is to confuse someone else’s achievements with your own.
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