THE MAP CHALLENGE
How six geography students at Sacramento State University came to collaborate with Mildly Scenic to create 20 original maps.
If you’ve been following along the mildly interesting journey of writing this book, then you’d know how drawing the maps has posed a new and delightful challenge. If you’ve ever picked up a trail guide, it typically will show a map of the trail depicted, along with the description. Well, the descriptions have been written and ready for print for a while now. But the maps… those require software and knowledge that I’ve been learning little by little over the past year. So… here’s the story of the creation of these maps — including the never-before documented trails — which are now ready to be integrated into Mildly Scenic: A Trail Guide to Sacramento’s Lower American River.
First and foremost, I wanted each map to include ALL of the foot trails — both the multi-use trail as well as the many social trails spontaneously formed along the parkway (more on the social trails here). I also wanted the maps to include the levee paths, the gravel maintenance roads, the Jedediah Smith Bike Trail, bathrooms, parking lots, and of course, my favorite beaches along the river. If you’ve roamed the river before, you may know that there are delightful pocket beaches carved out from the turns in the river… and I want my readers to know EXACTLY the beach I am recommending. It took nearly a year to get these maps created, and the process was a bit like feeling around in the dark because — I think you know this — I’ve never written a book before. And I don’t draw maps for a living. My favorite way to spend a day is on the river, not computering. But the story that has unfolded required a heavy dose of serendipity and dash of small town Sacramento.
Last Winter
After the chapters had been written and edited, I shifted my gaze to the unknown realm of the maps. First, I hired the talented graphic designer Greg Traverso, who designed the logo and consulted on the overall vibe of Mildly Scenic — how to communicate the approachability of the river, the ease of the adventures, and yet maintain the concept as a trail guide for those seeking nature in an urban space. Greg has the gift of a vision larger than life packaged into a neat and tidy visual layout. He was the first to see Mildly Scenic as a movement. But first, let’s make the book.
But Greg warned me from beginning: maps aren’t in his wheelhouse, but let’s try it anyway. I told him I’d stumbled upon a YouTube video outlining the best way to get a DIY trail run made into a map and it had something to do with:
1) exporting the Strava routes (I’d been diligently recording my routes in preparation for this project)
2) overlaying them onto the GIS (Geographical Information System) software (no clue how to do this)
3) polishing it up with Adobe Illustrator (this was Greg’s domain)
How hard could it be?
Here’s a snapshot of some of the loops and routes that I have recorded with Strava, an exercise app that utilizes GPS to track data:
SPRING ‘23
I sent Greg 20 screen shots of my Strava routes from along the river — crudely marking up the photos with my finger on my phone’s screen to show where the beaches and loops were to be labeled. The plan was to draw by freehand the routes from Strava on top of the maps found online and make an original rendering of the river…
Turns out, it was a nightmare of toggling between my screen shots, Google maps, Apple maps, Sac County Parks & Rec maps… and trying to recreate an accurate image. You see, the shape of the river banks vary among the online platforms. An aerial photo of the river in the winter will look different than the same shot in the summer. Unlike a street, the river ebbs and flows. The shape of a river laid onto a map is merely an approximation of the exact shape, and so the beaches and the trails can be subject to error. Unless it’s utilizing GPS coordinates.
With the summer quickly approaching, Greg and I decided to table the whole map project and reconvene in the Fall.
Here’s an example of 4 different maps of the same area, and how different it can look: Sac County Parks & Rec (upper left), Open Street Maps (upper right), Google maps (lower left), Strava app (lower right).
SUMMER ‘23
It just so happens that my cousin is a Geography professor at Northwestern University and over the summer, while boating with our families on a warm summer day he reminded me that mapping a river is exactly the type of problem he can solve. He knows maps. “Call me in the fall,” he says, “maybe I can help.”
Over the course of a few Zoom calls during the very limited time of a professor squeezing in a favor for his cousin in California, I learned enough about QIS software to know that I was in over my head. Still, I got the gist of it — the city has raw map data online that is free for public use. Made of layers, a map will have streets, trails, rivers, parks, commercial businesses, and traffic lights layered on top of one another. Find the right layers, and you can isolate the data needed and build a map that tells the story of the trails. His job: find those layers. My job: drop a pin on every point of interest (POI) for my trail guide and put those coordinates into a spreadsheet for him.
Here is a section of the map we threw together after a few meetings. The yellow dots are my POI. As you can see, it’s still far from book-ready.
FALL ‘23
Not wanting to burden my cousin further, and eager to bring this project back to Sacramento, I reached out to the Sac State Geography Department to see if they might recommend a student I could hire to help me create these trail maps.
Not only was their response immediate, but it turns out that the Department of Geography professors also love the American River Parkway... you know, the one that runs directly past campus! They were generous with their time and completely matched my own enthusiasm about creating a curated trail guide to the river.
After a a couple of meetings to outline the vision of Mildly Scenic, the map project became part of the curriculum for the semester and was assigned as a final project to the Data Acquisition and Management class.
On a chilly day in mid-December, the six students presented their final project, detailing where and how they sourced the various data layers, how they applied the style guide created by Greg Traverso and finally unveiled 20 gorgeous maps that correspond with each chapter/access point of the book. I mean, the hours of collaborative work!
A win-win-win-win is so much fun to be a part of: students, professors, authors and designers alike. All of us got to benefit from this semester’s project.
With the first two steps finished (exporting Strava data and overlaying it onto GIS software), the next step is to get the maps into Adobe Illustrator and onto the pages of the manuscript and move it along to print in 2024! Greg and I will be tackling this over the next month or two in the hopes of getting this trail guide out by the spring.
Stay tuned!
