There are very few people who have shaped how we experience the outdoors quite like Peter Slingsby. In this beautifully crafted piece, filmmaker, athlete and adventurer Damien Schumann (filmmaker) invites us into the world behind the maps, a world built on decades of curiosity, discipline and deep respect for landscape. As a close friend of Love Our Trails, Damien brings both intimacy and insight to this story, capturing not just the legacy of a legendary cartographer, but the philosophy that true exploration is about understanding, not just arrival.
I only fully grasped the extent of his work when I entered his garage to set up studio. Boxes upon boxes of old maps, books, photographs and research – the foundation of his near 60 year career – were pressed up against the walls. Meticulously labelled. The knowledge from which is now printed on thousands of maps and books scattered across the country. I was in the filing cabinet that has made exploration accessible to our generation.
Peter Slingsby is a cartographer. The most established map maker in South Africa. The kind that drew every contour by hand, and relied upon seeing things for himself before he was confident to relay that information to others.
Maps – I learned while deciphering how to best represent this man – are a web of knowledge. Every detail on a map is a piece of information, that holds a piece of history. Sometimes it’s political, sometimes it’s natural, but once it’s touched a landscape it all coexists. For Peter every details matters. The importance of an ant and how it buries seeds in the ground is as significant as the grandest palace, or the location of a war, or where a lost tribe once resided. Geography shows the area, but a map contextualises history more than anything else. And with that in hand, Peter hopes to pass on the knowledge of our landscape to all that venture upon it, and instil a value that will keep it conserved for generations to come.
Having a career spanning generations means he has seen things evolve. His attitude towards change is positive but, context is critical. GPS for example, is an incredible invention, but it will only get you to where you are going. A map will inform you of all your surroundings and provide options far more interesting than just getting from A to B. At the root of this example is a what Slingsby’s work is all about. Maps are not about getting from A to B. They’re about informing and understanding. Knowledge and options. While creating his 40 maps, he also published 15 books. These are an appendix to his maps, intricately adding ever more explanation to the landscapes he’s detailed. They leave one not only knowing where something is, but how it works and all fits together too. This is true exploration. Not going somewhere, but seeking to understand it.
There’s no doubt that Slingsby loves nature, but like a good habitat he sees everything as symbiotic. And so his love falls on people too. A line that was very hard to cut from the film was “Politcal figures that rule their people badly, rule their natural spaces badly too.” He emphasises that we love what is beautiful, and what is beautiful is what we conserve. To look after nature is to look after people. With this in mind Slingsby has always had the intent of sharing the places that intrigued him, so that others can learn about them too. As only once someone understands something will they truly value it. What hasn’t gained as much attention as his maps is the amount of educational work he has done to assist with generating value through understanding, so that we can conserve our natural spaces for generations to come.
I see maps as the passing on of knowledge. As the San would have done with oral histories, maps are our modern day equivalent. Its what we use to gain bearing and context. Slingsby has enriched our history and made our landscape infinitely more accessible to us. Now its up to us to follow his footprints and find the value in our land.
This is a portrait of the cartographer, Peter Slingsby.