Sketching the Map

A hand-drawn trail map in its early stages, created to help shape the world of Journeys Of The Crew: The Adventure Begins. Rather than focusing on precise distances, the sketch captures memorable landmarks, winding trails, and the spirit of exploration that drives the story.

Every adventure begins somewhere. This one begins with a pencil.

One of my favorite parts of writing Journeys Of The Crew hasn't involved writing at all.

It's been drawing.

Not elaborate illustrations.

Not polished artwork.

Just a simple pencil sketch of a map.

As I began writing The Adventure Begins, I quickly realized something. If I expected Tommy, Nate, and Adam to confidently explore the woods behind Tommy's house, then I needed to know those woods first.

So I grabbed a pencil.

The first version of the map wasn't much to look at. It was little more than a handful of landmarks connected by wandering trails. A home. An open field. A winding creek. A campsite. A few trees. A couple of places that seemed important enough to deserve a name.

That was enough to get started.

As the story grew, so did the map.

Trails shifted.

The creek found a more natural path.

Distances changed.

A campsite moved.

New landmarks appeared while others quietly disappeared because they didn't serve the story.

Something unexpected happened during that process.

I wasn't just drawing a map.

I was discovering the world my characters would eventually explore.

A map has a funny way of asking questions that a manuscript often doesn't.

How long would it really take to walk from home to camp?

Could the boys hear the creek from here?

Would they naturally discover one trail before another?

What would catch their attention first?

Those weren't questions I had considered until they were sitting in front of me on paper.

The map became much more than an illustration.

It became a storytelling tool.

One particular landmark found its way onto the map very early in the process. I won't say much about it just yet, except that every memorable adventure seems to have a place where the familiar world quietly gives way to something unknown. When you reach that point in The Adventure Begins, I hope you'll recognize it immediately.

The map itself is intentionally simple.

It isn't drawn to scale.

You couldn't use it to navigate a real forest, and that's by design. It's meant to feel like the kind of map someone might sketch after exploring a place they know well. The kind of map that helps you remember where things are instead of telling you exactly how many steps it takes to reach them.

In many ways, it reminds me of the hand-drawn maps my brother and I made as kids. They weren't accurate by surveying standards, but they were perfectly accurate to us. They captured the places that mattered and ignored everything that didn't.

That's exactly what I wanted this map to become.

As I continue sketching and refining it, I'll occasionally share pieces of the process here on the blog. You may notice the map changing as the story continues to evolve. That's part of the fun. Building a believable world is often less about inventing places than it is about slowly discovering them.

One day, I hope you'll unfold the finished map alongside Tommy, Nate, Adam, and Murphy as they set out on their first adventure.

Until then, I'll keep a pencil nearby.

Continue the Journey

For more about why maps remain part of how I understand the outdoors, read Why I Still Carry a Paper Map.

For a reflection on what maps record beyond geography, read Every Map Tells Two Stories.