"Maps are useful, of course, as are wonderful new satellite imagery. But these remain merely mute guides, especially when you’re trying to create a map that may have never existed before. You have to literally “go there,” see for yourself, explore the body of this world, and then “study up.”
When you do go to the edge, say standing on a mountain or sitting on the sand of a beach, it’s surprising to find that there are no boundaries there “on the ground.” The world just goes about its business, flowing by continuously, unconcerned about our need for boundary-making. Even so-called “natural boundaries” on ridgelines, for instance, are not obvious among the welter of peaks and slopes—it’s often hard to tell where the drainage divide runs from “here to there” from ridge to ridge.
The problem is exacerbated, of course, when dealing with wholly artificial political boundaries as “lines on a map” such as the 49th parallel which forms the western boundary between Canada and the United States, or the epitome of strangeness, that intersection of the straight-lined “Four Corners” region in the American southwest."
Some folks here may find this useful.
North American Environmental Atlas
http://www.cec.org/north-american-environmental-atlas/
"Maps are useful, of course, as are wonderful new satellite imagery. But these remain merely mute guides, especially when you’re trying to create a map that may have never existed before. You have to literally “go there,” see for yourself, explore the body of this world, and then “study up.”
When you do go to the edge, say standing on a mountain or sitting on the sand of a beach, it’s surprising to find that there are no boundaries there “on the ground.” The world just goes about its business, flowing by continuously, unconcerned about our need for boundary-making. Even so-called “natural boundaries” on ridgelines, for instance, are not obvious among the welter of peaks and slopes—it’s often hard to tell where the drainage divide runs from “here to there” from ridge to ridge.
The problem is exacerbated, of course, when dealing with wholly artificial political boundaries as “lines on a map” such as the 49th parallel which forms the western boundary between Canada and the United States, or the epitome of strangeness, that intersection of the straight-lined “Four Corners” region in the American southwest."
-- David McCloskey
from -
https://www.cascadia-institute.org/boundaries_more.html
Reinhabitation
Gary Snyder
Manoa, Volume 25, Issue 1, 2013, pp. 44-48 (Article)
https://sites.tufts.edu/mythritualsymbol2017/files/2017/08/snyder-reinhabitation.pdf