Deschutes County is on the map. The technology of mapping has come a long ways since John C. Fremont camped in Shevlin Park. He was an exploring Pathfinder who has his name linked to many of the places he mapped. Near the end he mapped out his own life looking back on the paths he had followed and the linked steps that made the path. His story is full of a wide range of fascinating things in which he was first and foremost on the various paths he traveled.
He was the first candidate of the Republican Party for the office of President of the United States.
Since Fremont camped here hundreds of thousands followed some kind of map using some mode of travel to get to this County. They made their mark on its map in different ways. A more recent County Map links a name to land ownership entitlement.
Mapping technology has come a long way over time. This more recent County Tax Map is an old school way to find a path to a real place. An old school way to get from point A to point B but it is a fundmental building block in the structure of mapping technology today. That entire structure is all founded on the uniqueness of a granular level precise positioning coordinate system .over the entire two dimensional surface of the earth that was the launch point into a third dimension that took us to the moon and is taking us conceptually much farther than beyond the moon.
A geographic map is a human conceptual representation of the real world we live in and a tool to find our way in it. A month ago I saw Salmon leaping up a stream to a destination by direct physical sensing of present position linked to direction. They smell their way to an ultimate destination. Real salmon don't ask for directions they just follow them naturally. The same way I follow my nose to a donut shop when I am bike touring.
Maybe John C. Fremont just had a better sense of nose direction than the rest of us and followed it. A guy who never asked for directions.
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