The passion for animals and for
Galicia's green spaces are just two of the many ties that bind
Javier Arufe and Natalia Pedre. Another of these ties is the
cartography. They were responsible for the map where the Spanish
Trail orienteering Championships took place and this was the starting
point of a really pleasant conversation. About maps and TrailO,
naturally!
How did you know each other? Have
you find each other, mapping in the forest, and it was like “magic”
or this cartography “thing” came later?
Javier Arufe (J. A.) - It wasn’t
that romantic (laughs). I'd been drawn maps and it turned out to be
an almost natural process that Nati joined me. Mapmaking is a very
demanding job, it requires lots of time and dedication, so we realize
that, rather than being apart from each other, we would commit
ourselves to cartography.
Natalia Pedre (N. P.) -
Moreover, the forest delights me. Since my childhood, I love the
contact with nature and this was also a way to explore the forest in
its most interesting details.
What is it, “making maps”?
J. A. – I started making maps
as a personal challenge. I realized that this could be my place as
member of a club that organizes events. We have the courses, the
start, the finish, the logistics, and we have, of course, the map.
The challenge was trying to understand how an athlete could become a
cartographer. The truth is that I'm already on it for 20 years.
What are the most important
resources during the map making process?
N. P. - Well, I just work on it
for 10 years now but I believe that’s a process with several stages
and that has improving a lot recently. Since the paper sheets, with
coloured pencils, to the transparency paper and then with the new
technologies that Javi controls so well. Step by step, we started
bringing with us the computer to the field work. Everything has its
pros and cons, but working directly on the computer in the field
allows you to save a lot of time in terms of homework and gives you a
much more precise results, something that we couldn’t expect when
designing on paper. Another important support technology is the GPS.
In your experience as cartographers,
I’m sure there will be some pleasant moments and some not so, some
maps that you proudly recall, others that brought you nothing but
headaches...
J. A. - All maps are suffering. I'm not professional and, after 20 years making
maps, the effective time in the cartography turns out to be really
much less. It’s the work, the family life, the sport, the training…
all of it doesn’t leave you too much time to making maps. The best
map I've done so far has resulted from a quiet walk in the forest,
without having in mind some plans about maps or anything else. But
the map making is a quite suffered process and the most suffered so
far was undoubtedly the last one, for the Spanish Trail orienteering
Championships, in Castiñeiras Lake. It was a tremendous task,
demanding all our knowledge in order to give the competitors the
information they need, which in Trail orienteering is… everything.
When I make a map, I always have in mind the elite - not that the
other classes, particularly the youngest ones, stay out of my
concerns. I want them to realize that the reentrant is visible, the
vegetation is perfectly readable, the colours are correct. I want to
make sure that I'm able to provide the appropriate information and
feel, in the end, the athlete's happiness. But this approach, in
Trail orienteering, is not as simple as that and turns out to be
highly demanding for any cartographer.
N. P. - Of course, the whole
process of drawing a map has a subjective part. Where the doubts
begin, begins the suffering. To draw a map from start to finish,
following strictly a defined criterion, it’s tremendously
stressful. Just because it's another day or we are more tired, the
map drawing style cannot simply change. Still, in the end there will
always be room for some subjectivity and therein lie the
cartographers’ fear.
In the final part of your work on
the Castiñeiras Lake map, you could count on the presence of the
course planner and the controller. How did you see this
multidisciplinary approach?
J. A. – The
multidisciplinarity is always very positive. There’s someone
setting the course and designing the tasks, someone supervising,
someone drawing the map and, together, it’s possible to set a
criteria that will prove to be very important for the final product.
At least in some small details, this map would be different without
this work together. The definition of common criteria turns out to be
something really interesting.
Have you ever felt, for some reason,
that a map was taking care of you, invading your personal sphere,
demanding the time and availability that you didn’t have?
N. P. - Some maps are more
demanding than others, even from a physical point of view. Some maps
challenge you so much that you reach the end of the day completely
exhausted. It may seem nonsense, but even the fact that you take the
computer to the forest makes you reach the end of the day practically
unable to move your arm.
J. A. – I’m willing to give
up from maps, just because of the level of demand they require, the
time they impose. Otherwise, there’s a commitment to the club and
you can't disappoint the people who trust you and count on you. At
the beginning you have an empty sheet of paper and it will be
necessary to fill it up. This is really hard. You start to reach some
enthusiasm when you see the map growing, the paper begins to colour
up. This means that the mapped surface is growing every day. The end
is approaching and you say to yourself that you can do a little more,
there is a particular area that deserves one final effort. But, at
the beginning, things are always very difficult.
N. P. - Yes, the first day is
always the worst. As we are not professionals, we need some recovery
time to embrace the challenge of a new map. And when that day
arrives, you look like a duck (laughs).
The map’s construction follows
some kind of logical principle? Firstly there’s a path, for
example, which works like an axis, and you draw the whole from there?
N. P. – Things can vary a lot.
We may choose a small area and we draw it. Sometimes we take the
paths and, from there, we draw all the vegetation. It is very
variable.
J. A. - When we left to the
terrain, we usually have some ideas heard from people who did some previous
visits. Based on these information, we have to establish the map
limit, which depends on the course itself, if it’s a Middle
Distance or a Long Distance, for example. After that first moment,
the plan is set from home, on the computer. Little by little, we try
to fix the time we have, according the working area, but the truth is
that things never happen as planned. We start in a certain place,
then we go to another, the work estimated in two hours will last four
or five, we need to constantly readjust the project and all this
turns out to be very complicated, and especially because we have
deadlines to meet. For me, as a cartographer, the hardest part is to
find the best way to take the next step. From where I am, how do I
finish the closest areas of the map and how can I make sure that
nothing is left behind. This is the most complicated part.
Working together and knowing each
other so well, what are the most valuable qualities that you see in
the other?
N. P. - Well, besides having
much more practical than me, Javier is also much more in love with
cartography. He works much more efficiently, he’s quicker making
decisions about what symbols or colours should be chosen. And I’m
not just speaking about the field work, but at home he devotes much
more time than me to the mapping work and the use of computer
programs, which turns out to give him the easiness that I don't have.
J. A. – Nati’s advice is
often really important because she reminds me about the rules. As I
mentioned before, it is essential to keep homogeneity in terms of
criteria when drawing a map and I should say it's very easy to forget
these principles in some circumstances. It’s in those moments that
she reminds me what things should be done, according to this or that
principle, and everything become clear again. If we escape from the
criteria, the result is the impoverishment of the map quality. It is
therefore important to keep a cool head throughout the work and
Nati’s collaboration turns out to be precious. In this point, she’s
better than me.
Let's talk about Trail orienteering.
Despite all the suffering that you've mentioned before, will you come
back to a TrailO map?
J. A. - Yes. It's true that,
every time we finish a map, we swore to ourselves that is over. But
we ended up coming back. When a big event, like the Spanish Trail
orienteering Championships, comes to an ending, we are able to ensure
that we won't embrace another adventure like that, but the next week
we are already looking for new challenges. And with the mapping is
the same. We are committed with the Trail orienteering's promotion in
Galicia and this leads us to admit that, surely, we'll come back to
the maps and to the Trail orienteering events. We have to attract
people, start with simple tasks, basic problems. And we are sure
that, little by little, things will evolve, people will demand more
and the bar will rise.
So, you're optimistic about Trail
orienteering in Galicia, in the near future.
N. P. - I think so. The number
of participants in this event was very important and motivating. Many
volunteers, despite their small knowledge of TrailO, showed a great
interest in learning more in order to help better. People will
realize the challenge behind TrailO. The fact that it also open doors
to people who, until now, couldn't practice any kind of sport, makes
that Trail orienteering can be seen in a very special way. We can't
find this inclusive value in any other sport.
J. A. - Above all, it's a way to
integrate people that occurs naturally. It's amazing that people with
reduced mobility can participate in the same way as the so-called
“normal people”, facing the same demanding challenges and
fighting for the best possible result at the same level. In Trail
orienteering everybody is equal, there are no differences and this is
the most important. It integrates, in fact, the person as a whole and
not just in the specific aspects related to the practice of
Orienteering.
N.P. - Furthermore, it allows to
length the sport life. Speaking about Trail orienteering and thinking
only of people in wheelchairs is a terrible mistake. There are people
who have walking problems but they don't need, necessarily,
wheelchairs to move from one place to another. There are competitors
moving at their own pace but, for reasons of health or age, are
forced to reduce or abandon Orienteering. To them, Trail Orienteering
can be the solution to hold the sport they love.
Joaquim Margarido
