Walking and Mapping the Forest
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As every year I spend part of my vacations at my grandparents' house,
in the Lorraine countryside. This year, as I just put a degoogled
Android on my old Fairphone 2, I can have a better GPS than on my
Pinephone and use it to map tracks and trails in the forest around
the house with Vespucci. Till then I could only use JOSM and
satellite images to map the place, which is quite difficult for
forests, as you cannot see trails under the trees.
We spent a good time with my daughter exploring new ways and new
parts of the countryside. The feeling of discovering unexplored
places — even if the presence of trails shows that it is just
unmapped. But you can only guess where the paths lead, you never know
how much time you need nor where you will go. That's quite funny in
our very documented world. Paradoxically, by mapping, we remove this
possibility of walking in a undocumented world from those who will
follow us. I guess this is the ambivalent nature of all exploration.
But bad surprise this morning: she had a tick on the body, probably
caught in the wet forest yesterday. We removed it and desinfected the
bite. Hopefully she will not be afflicted by tick-borne disease… Even
in this temperate region, exploration is fraught with some danger.
