Deep Maps: A Technique for Travel Writers

摘录The Soul Of Place — A Creative Writing Workbook: Ideas and Exercises for Conjuring the Genius Loci

经过琳达·拉平（Linda Lappin）

“ Deep Map”是美国原住民作家William Lives Heat-Moon在他的非凡旅行论文集中创造的术语草原: A Deep Map. After publishing a very successful “horizontal” travel book entitled蓝色高速公路，a restless, rootless ramble across America, Heat-Moon decided to take a “vertical trip” for his new project, heeding a suggestion from N. Scott Momaday in通往多雨山的路: to surrender himself to a particular landscape, examining it from all perspectives, wandering across it and wondering about it.

在草原,Heat-moon选择的景观是美国大陆的罗尼格山（Roniger Hill）的一块草原隔离中心，从那里散发出778平方英里的领土，称为Chase County。乍一看，这个地方似乎是堪萨斯州更大空白的空白，那里没有发生太多事情，一个孤独的过境场所被部落人民，定居者，投机者和现代居民遗弃。但是，当作者完成了他的深度地图时，蔡斯县被发现是杂乱的史诗般的叙事质地，纠缠了悲剧，喜剧，神话，传奇和启示录，早在国王图特国王的时代就可以追溯到很久以前。

为了创建他的地形文字地图，热门首先首先获得了25个极为详细的美国地质调查地图，涵盖了Chase County，占地一英寸半，他放在客厅的地板上，并通过步行进行研究对面。当他穿越地图时，他发现它们类似于网格，就像考古学家用来绘制发掘的网格一样。The metaphor fit: wasn’t he also digging for “shards?" He then proceeded to test the grid against the territory, hiking across Chase County section by section “in quest of the land and what informs it,” challenging the actual form of the grid itself, with its prisonlike grille of ninety-degree angles, to lead him toward his own darker, and more mysterious connection to the land.

After eight years of research and six years of writing, his end product is a vertical descent through recent and remote history into geological time.草原编织自然历史，地方历史和民间文学的话语，当地居民和科学研究，自传，社会学，人类学，考古学，生态学的口头证词。读者熟悉负鼠，臭鼬，野牛，土狼和各种草原草。在沉积物和灌木丛，底层和地下山脉下苦苦挣扎的道路；埋葬土墩，木屋，法院，监狱；伴随着那些顽强的定居者和现代居民的生活和传说，他们选择住在空气如此新鲜的地方，似乎没有人以前使用过它，勇敢地遭到龙卷风和其他世界末日的攻击草原的骑兵：火，洪水和干旱。Heat-moon关于他过去的回忆的叙述以及当前对这个地方与大草原的多种声音以及互文参考的回应：藏族天空神，古罗马道路，日本文字，但丁的地狱, and the Book of Revelation all find affinities in the heart of Kansas, entwined with the stories of native peoples who lived there six thousand years ago. Ultimately, he discovers while rambling in a half somnolent state that his real bond to the land lies deep beneath the surface, perceptible only to the non-rational mind. Facts will only carry us so far, he concludes; the only way to really know a place is to dream it.

Heat-Moon’s Deep Map resembles Bernard Anson’s Map of Imagination, which we might define as a personal cognitive model of a territory that attempts to encompass all historical, spiritual, mythic, and personal data regarding that territory, layered across time. Working with the Map of Imagination brings people, stories, landscape and history into alignment. For Anson, who combines the practices of green tourism, story-telling performance art, and research into the genius loci, the wars and peregrinations, rituals and cultural achievements enacted upon a territory是它的天才基因座的体现，它继续蓬勃发展，并在整个世纪以来，尤其是在其居民的潜意识上。通过重新发现，尤其是通过重述嵌入景观中的故事，我们可以更好地理解将我们束缚到一个地方的联系，以及自己的位置如何塑造我们的身份。

A deep map, then, is a sample swatch of the multiple manifestations of the genius loci. The deep map configures narratives. It is a matrix of intertextual story-telling, charting our movements through the landscape or cityscape, tracing the pathways of our habits and rituals, depositing our experiences over time in its folds, intersecting at every turn the mesh of lives and stories that have preceded us. Since the publication of草原in 1991,“deep map” has become a term also used by contemporary geographers and conceptual artists to refer to a sample swath in any form—textual, visual, or performance—illustrating the layers of natural, cultural, and personal history stratified upon any given geographical spot. In its meanders circulate the spirits of place.

Writing Exercise: Make a Deep Map

尽管此练习在农村和城市环境中都很好，但对于第一次尝试，我建议您尝试在您更接近自然的环境中进行尝试。

选择一个乡村地区，或深层沉浸在自然环境中 - 沿海甚至是城市公园，目的是调查其所有旁路和晦涩的角落。首先，修复您希望学习的空间的边界，然后在这些边界内使用所有感官步行探索它。绘制该位置的地图或获得一个地图，以用作对您的笔记和图纸的支撑。尝试不同的路线，途径，观点。Heat-moon称对该领域的密切关注的检查为“测试网格”。

在不同天气条件下，在一天中的不同时间访问您选择的网站。品尝气氛。研究其拓扑。是否有特定的景观功能吸引您，例如池塘或废弃的建筑物？如果有道路或铁路，它们在哪里引导？如果您不知道树木和植物的名称，请尝试找出为什么它们对特定地方很重要。观察其他生命在那里展开：动物，鸟类，昆虫，人。是否有渔民，慢跑者，周日的婴儿车，蘑菇猎人或棚户区？请注意，天气事件或人类占领，倒下的树木，糖果包装，最近的篝火的痕迹或死车过长的痕迹，剩下的是什么？谁可能在晚上去那里？

Observe your personal response to all this. Take notes, pictures, videos of what you find there. Although you could limit your observation period to a single visit, deep maps take time to assemble. The more time you spend actually exploring, the richer your map will be. In between your visits, research place names, local history, local natural history, folklore, gossip, superstitions related to the place. Match your research findings with what you actually find on site. Interview residents or other walkers you meet there or local experts on its history, flora and fauna. How does your own story weave into the territory as you proceed? How does the outer environment mirror your emotions or state of mind as you go along? Assemble your materials to build a text or multimedia project.

One way to organize your material could be to divide it into units of measure, which may be “miles,” “blocks” or even “paces,” and structure your text by means of your unit, i.e. you might dedicate a line/stanza/ paragraph/chapter for each unit/block/mile. Another organizing strategy is the thematic approach, selecting broad categories of themes like “water,” “fire,” “road stops,” “woodpeckers,” “danger,” or whatever appeals.

Deep Mapping will provide you with a wealth of information about an environment that you can transform into vivid settings in your writing. My first novel,The Etruscan,是罗马北部地区托斯西亚的一幅深层地图，我喜欢在葡萄园里走动并戳入废墟。在写我的小说时，我融入了我在探索时捡到的许多链的故事：旧房屋和塔楼的图像，动物和植物传说，迷信，农民传统，甚至是当地色彩的一部分，并给予书籍的一部分。与基于童话模式的情节形成鲜明对比的详细，真实的背景。

Keep in mind that the Deep Map is a versatile project that may take any genre, and may be contained in a single work or spawn a series of books. You can deep map any environment, including interiors, physical or mental. May Sarton’s best-selling diaries植物梦深和孤独杂志可以将诗人的生活，房屋和花园的深层地图理解为新罕布什尔州纳尔逊的生活，她在抑郁症和创造力的工作中工作。

摘录地方的灵魂– A Creative Writing Workbook,by Linda Lappin (Travelers Tales, 2015). 2015 Gold Medal Winner Nautilus Awards in the Creative Process Category. Isbn: 978-1609521035.