Seven Bridges revisited – further reflections on the map and the territory

The  Seven Bridges Walk is an annual fitness and fund-raising event organised by the Cancer Council of New South Wales. The picturesque 28 km circuit weaves its way through a number of waterfront suburbs around Sydney Harbour and takes in some spectacular views along the way.  My friend John and I did the walk for the first time in 2017. Apart from thoroughly enjoying the experience, there was  another, somewhat unexpected payoff: the walk evoked some thoughts on project management and the map-territory relationship which I subsequently wrote up in a post on this blog.

Figure 1:The map, the plan

We enjoyed the walk so much that we decided to do it again in 2018. Now, it is a truism that one cannot travel exactly the same road twice. However, much is made of the repeatability of certain kinds of experiences. For example, the discipline of project management is largely predicated on the assumption that projects are repeatable.  I thought it would be interesting to see how this plays out in the case of a walk along a well-defined route, not the least because it is in many ways akin to a repeatable project.

To begin with, it is easy enough to compare the weather conditions on the two days: 29 Oct 2017 and 28 Oct 2018. A quick browse of this site gave me the data as I was after (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Weather on 29 Oct 2017 and 28 Oct 2018

The data supports our subjective experience of the two walks. The conditions in 2017 were less than ideal for walking: clear and uncomfortably warm with a hot breeze from the north.  2018 was considerably better: cool and overcast with a gusty south wind – in other words, perfect walking weather. Indeed, one of the things we commented on the second time around was how much more pleasant it was.

But although weather conditions matter, they tell but a part of the story.

On the first walk, I took a number of photographs at various points along the way. I thought it would be interesting to take photographs at the same spots, at roughly the same time as I did the last time around, and compare how things looked a year on. In the next few paragraphs I show a few of these side by side (2017 left, 2018 right) along with some comments.

We started from Hunters Hill at about 7:45 am as we did on our first foray, and took our first photographs at Fig Tree Bridge, about a kilometre from the starting point.

Figure 3: Lane Cove River from Fig Tree Bridge (2017 Left, 2018 Right)

The purple Jacaranda that captivated us in 2017 looks considerably less attractive the second time around (Figure 3): the tree is yet to flower and what little there is there does not show well in the cloud-diffused light. Moreover, the scaffolding and roof covers on the building make for a much less attractive picture. Indeed, had the scene looked so the first time around, it is unlikely we would have considered it worthy of a photograph.

The next shot (Figure 4), taken not more than a  hundred metres from the previous one, also looks considerably different:  rougher waters and no kayakers in the foreground. Too cold and windy, perhaps?  The weather and wind data in Fig 2 would seem to support that conclusion.

Figure 4: Morning kayakers on the river (2017 Left, 2018 Right)

The photographs in Figure 5 were taken at Pyrmont Bridge  about four hours into the walk. We already know from Figure 4 that it was considerably windier in 2018. A comparison of the flags in the two shots in Figure 5 reveal an additional detail: the wind was from opposite directions in the two years. This is confirmed by the weather information in Figure 2, which also tells us that the wind was from the north in 2017 and the south the following year (which explains the cooler conditions).  We can even get an  approximate temperature: the photographs were taken around 11:30 am both years, and a quick look at Figure 2 reveals that the temperature at noon was about 30 C in 2017 and 18 C in 2018.

Figure 5: Pyrmont Bridge (2017 Left, 2018 Right)

The point about the wind direction and cloud conditions is also confirmed by comparing the photographs in Figure 6, taken at Anzac Bridge, a few kilometres further along the way (see the direction of the flag atop the pylon).

Figure 6: View looking up Anzac Bridge (2017 L, 2018 R)

Skipping over to the final section of the walk, here are a couple of shots I took towards the end: Figure 7 shows a view from Gladesville Bridge and Figure 8 shows one from Tarban Creek Bridge.  Taken together the two confirm some of the things we’ve already noted regarding the weather and conditions for photography.

Figure 7: View from Gladesville Bridge (2017 L, 2018 R)

Further, if you look closely at Figures 7 and 8, you will also see the differences in the flowering stage of the Jacaranda.

Figure 8: View from Tarban Creek Bridge (2017 L, 2018 R)

A detail that I did not notice until John pointed it out is that the the boat at the bottom edge of  both photographs in Fig. 8 is the same one (note the colour of the furled sail)! This was surprising to us, but it should not have been so.  It turns out that boat owners have to apply for private mooring licenses and are allocated positions at which they install a suitable mooring apparatus. Although this is common knowledge for boat owners, it likely isn’t so for others.

The photographs are a visual record of some of the things we encountered  along the way. However, the details in recorded in them have more to do with aesthetics rather the experience – in photography of this kind, one tends to preference what looks good over what happened. Sure, some of the photographs offer hints about the experience but much of this is incidental and indirect. For example,  when taking the photographs in Figures 5 and 6, it was certainly not my intention to record the wind direction. Indeed, that would have been a highly convoluted way to convey information that is directly and more accurately described by the data in Figure 2 . That said, even data has limitations: it can help fill in details such as the wind direction and temperature but it does not evoke any sense of what it was like to be there, to experience the experience, so to speak.

Neither data nor photographs are the stuff memories are made of. For that one must look elsewhere.

–x–

As Heraclitus famously said, one can never step into the same river twice. So it is with walks.  Every experience of a walk is unique; although map remains the same the territory is invariably different on each traverse, even if only subtly so. Indeed, one could say that the territory is defined through one’s experience of it. That experience is not reproducible, there are always differences in the details.

As John Salvatier points out, reality has a surprising amount of detail, much of which we miss because we look but do not see. Seeing entails a deliberate focus on minutiae such as the play of morning light on the river or tree; the cool damp from last night’s rain; changes in the built environment, some obvious, others less so.  Walks are made memorable by precisely such details, but paradoxically  these can be hard to record in a meaningful way.  Factual (aka data-driven) descriptions end up being laundry lists that inevitably miss the things that make the experience memorable.

Poets do a better job. Consider, for instance, Tennyson‘s take on a brook:

“…I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever….”

One can almost see and hear a brook. Not Tennyson’s, but one’s own version of it.

Evocative descriptions aren’t the preserve of poets alone. Consider the following description of Sydney Harbour, taken from DH Lawrence‘s Kangaroo:

“…He took himself off to the gardens to eat his custard apple-a pudding inside a knobbly green skin-and to relax into the magic ease of the afternoon. The warm sun, the big, blue harbour with its hidden bays, the palm trees, the ferry steamers sliding flatly, the perky birds, the inevitable shabby-looking, loafing sort of men strolling across the green slopes, past the red poinsettia bush, under the big flame-tree, under the blue, blue sky-Australian Sydney with a magic like sleep, like sweet, soft sleep-a vast, endless, sun-hot, afternoon sleep with the world a mirage. He could taste it all in the soft, sweet, creamy custard apple. A wonderful sweet place to drift in….”

Written in 1923, it remains a brilliant evocation of the Harbour even today.

Tennyson’s brook and Lawrence’s Sydney do a better job than photographs or factual description, even though the latter are considered more accurate and objective. Why?  It is because their words are more than mere description: they are stories that convey a sense of what it is like to be there.

–x–

The two editions of the walk covered exactly the same route, but our experiences of the territory on the two instances were very different. The differences were in details that ultimately added up to the uniqueness of each experience.  These details cannot  be captured by maps and visual or written records, even in principle. So although one may gain familiarity with certain aspects of a territory through repetition, each lived experience of it will be unique. Moreover, no two individuals will experience the territory in exactly the same way.

When bidding for projects, consultancies make much of their prior experience of doing similar projects elsewhere. The truth, however, is that although two projects may look identical on paper they will invariably be different in practice.  The map,  as Korzybski famously said, is not the territory.  Even more, every encounter with the territory is different.

All this is not to say that maps (or plans or data) are useless, one needs them as orienting devices. However, one must accept that they offer limited guidance on how to deal with the day-to-day events and occurrences on a project. These tend to be unique because they are highly context dependent. The lived experience of a project is therefore necessarily different from the planned one. How can one gain insight into the former? Tennyson and Lawrence offer a hint: look to the stories told by people who have traversed the territory, rather than the maps, plans and data-driven reports they produce.