Covid-19: Tim Robinson, author and cartographer

Daily, we are seeing accounts of creative lives snuffed out by this virus.

Today I encountered someone I had not heard of, I didn't think: Tim Robinson, a Yorkshire man who in 1972 traveled to and fell in love with western Ireland—especially the Burren, Connemara, and the Aran Islands. He settled there and spent his career (no, his life) chronicling these places, in both words and—and this is what caught my attention—maps. It isn't often I see someone described as a working cartographer.

As I read more about him, in tributes and blog posts, I realized that yes, I had heard of him in fact—or rather his two-volume Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage (1985) and Labyrinth (1995), though I have read neither.

Here is the description of Pilgrimage from Amazon; it seems to do a good job of putting this book, and Mr. Robinson himself, in perspective:

The Aran Islands, in Galway Bay off the west coast of Ireland, are a unique geological and cultural landscape, and for centuries their stark beauty and their inhabitants’ traditional way of life have attracted pilgrims from abroad. After a visit with his wife in 1972, Tim Robinson moved to the islands, where he started making maps and gathering stories, eventually developing the idea for a cosmic history of Árainn, the largest of the three islands. Pilgrimage is the first of two volumes that make up Stones of Aran, in which Robinson maps the length and breadth of Árainn. Here he circles the entire island, following a clockwise, sunwise path in quest of the “good step,” in which walking itself becomes a form of attention and contemplation.

Like Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia, Stones of Aran is not only a meticulous and mesmerizing study of place but an entrancing and altogether unclassifiable work of literature. Robinson explores Aran in both its elemental and mythical dimensions, taking us deep into the island’s folklore, wildlife, names, habitations, and natural and human histories. Bringing to life the ongoing, forever unpredictable encounter between one man and a given landscape, Stones of Aran discovers worlds.

Sounds like a book I'd enjoy reading.

But, as I said: his maps! They were admired far and wide, for their meticulousness, their evocation of place through names, their "deep history," and even their genuine usefulness.

He described himself as a practitioner not of "geography," but of "geophany, the showing forth of the earth." In this, he reminds me of Robert MacFarlane—who wrote the introduction to a recent edition of Pilgrimage and who, on April 3, the day of Robinson's death at age 85, hosted a Twitter tribute thread in his honor.

Here is Tim  Robinson talking about "unfolding the landscape":

And here are pieces of a few of his maps:

This and the next two are segments of his map of Inishmore

The Burren (a very well-used map)

Connemara

I am glad to have discovered this man and his life's work—but I am so sorry I had to learn about him the way I did. RIP, Tim Robinson.