Speaker 1: Welcome to Season four of On the Job, a podcast
Speaker 1: about finding your life's work. On the job is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Express Employment Professionals, a leading staffing provider
Speaker 1: that employs nearly six hundred thousand people annually across more
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Speaker 1: production floor to the front office. Express No's Jobs Get
Speaker 1: to Know Express. This season, we're speaking with folks who
Speaker 1: are finding their professional stride in a tumultuous job market
Speaker 1: and learning how to double down on their skills and
Speaker 1: their experience to overcome challenges. We'll bring you inspiring stories
Speaker 1: of people making themselves essential, an important skill set in
Speaker 1: any economy. Today. For on the Job, we look at
Speaker 1: a profession that you might not have thought was still
Speaker 1: around cartography. I went and sought out a modern mapmaker
Speaker 1: to talk to him about the job, how it's changed
Speaker 1: over the years, and the beauty of finding your own
Speaker 1: way in the world. Vermont on the first really warm
Speaker 1: sunny spring day of this year, I got in my
Speaker 1: car fifteen, I took out my Big Road Atlas Londonderry,
Speaker 1: and I set out to find half good Pond, Half
Speaker 1: good Pond. Here we come Before COVID nineteen. I was
Speaker 1: on a cross country trip and right towards the end
Speaker 1: I started using this big Road Atlas I had in
Speaker 1: the car instead of the GPS on my phone, and
Speaker 1: it made a world of difference. I felt so much
Speaker 1: more present and was so happy to not constantly be
Speaker 1: looking at a phone. In a lot of ways that
Speaker 1: the data we have on our phone is just data.
Speaker 1: It's just a couple of lines and maybe some nasty
Speaker 1: looking font. This is Tom Harrison. He is a cartographer,
Speaker 1: a map maker. But something interesting about looking at a
Speaker 1: map and say, oh, this is the landscape around me.
Speaker 1: I'm going through, Um, you know, Newtown, but right here,
Speaker 1: about five miles away is old Town. I wonder what
Speaker 1: old Town looks like five more miles do we take it? Right?
Speaker 1: Tom is the reason I'm looking for Half Good Pond.
Speaker 1: He's got his own company called Tom Harrison Maps. I'm
Speaker 1: the entire company. He lives and works in San Rafael, California,
Speaker 1: just north of San Francisco, and I've been producing shady
Speaker 1: relief topographic maps for hiking and backpacking for over thirty years.
Speaker 1: I had been using my atlas around the country in
Speaker 1: places that I'd never been before. But after talking with Tom,
Speaker 1: I looked on the map to see if there's anything
Speaker 1: I didn't know about right where I grew up, southern Vermont,
Speaker 1: and I saw Half Good Pond not even twenty miles away.
Speaker 1: It was right off a road that I've driven a
Speaker 1: million times. Oh, I think I just went past it.
Speaker 1: I'd grown up hearing about it, and I heard it
Speaker 1: was beautiful. I just never went I never realized it
Speaker 1: was right there. Guy. See this is where it gets tricky.
Speaker 1: But I live in a very rural area. So on
Speaker 1: the map, half Good Pond is just in a big
Speaker 1: green patch off the main road. It's all country roads,
Speaker 1: so it might be a little lost. Tom says, that's
Speaker 1: the beauty of maps. Sometimes you gotta figure it out exactly. So,
Speaker 1: even though you're you're making these things so people can
Speaker 1: orient themselves in space, you hope people still wander and
Speaker 1: get lost a little bit. Yeah, very much. You don't
Speaker 1: have to know everything, and some things are better off
Speaker 1: just being part of the discovery of your day. Where
Speaker 1: is it? I'll be honest, I was really surprised doing
Speaker 1: research for this show and finding out that not only
Speaker 1: is matt making still an occupation, but there is a
Speaker 1: lot of work out there for cartographers. All there's tons
Speaker 1: of the tons of it. I mean, McDonald's has cartographers
Speaker 1: really well. You know, if you want to put a
Speaker 1: McDonald someplace, you want to find where the nearest school
Speaker 1: is and and figure out what's the cheapest real estate
Speaker 1: you can buy. Nearest schools, the kids can walk there
Speaker 1: for the lunch break and all the kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that everybody needs to know where things are. And that's
Speaker 1: what cartographers do. Tom designed beautifully ndered and shaded maps
Speaker 1: mostly for hikers. And while I might have assumed that
Speaker 1: advancements in technology would put people like Tom out of work,
Speaker 1: it's actually opened up tons of cartography jobs all over
Speaker 1: the world. Any planning department in any city uses cartographers.
Speaker 1: Like when you put a new subdivision in and you're
Speaker 1: trying not to upset the people that live there, you
Speaker 1: need to show why that is not going through the
Speaker 1: local cemetery and why I won't affect the spot at
Speaker 1: ol population and blah blah blah. A cartographer has to
Speaker 1: find that data put on the map for the planner
Speaker 1: to say, Okay, here's what we're going to do. And
Speaker 1: that's designing both printed and digital maps for the public
Speaker 1: to see. And if you're thinking, okay, but I've never
Speaker 1: needed a cartographer, I've got GPS. Well, a lot of
Speaker 1: the base maps that your GPS uses are made by cartographers.
Speaker 1: If you think about it, GPS just gives you a
Speaker 1: latitude and a longitude doesn't show you where you are.
Speaker 1: You ever look at a GPS on your phone when
Speaker 1: you don't have any service and you're just a blue
Speaker 1: dot in the middle of a gray grid. That's what
Speaker 1: you or GPS would always look like without the Toms
Speaker 1: of the world. Wow. So okay. So any company who
Speaker 1: is expanding and building new stores, any apps that use geolocation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everyone needs mat makers, don't You don't see them very
Speaker 1: much because you're kind of behind the scenes, but they're
Speaker 1: out there. Tom was born in nineteen forty seven in Bakersfield, California.
Speaker 1: He grew up there. He was a boy scout. He's
Speaker 1: a pretty adventurous kid. He loved hiking and exploring and backpacking.
Speaker 1: Did you ever get super lost as a kid? Is
Speaker 1: that why you do what you do? I've never been lost.
Speaker 1: I've been confused a few times. Not lost. That's good.
Speaker 1: That means you're a good mat maker. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I trust a mat maker who gets lost regularly.
Speaker 1: In the sixties, Tom went to college for a semester,
Speaker 1: but it wasn't his thing At the time. The Vietnam
Speaker 1: War was in full swing, and in nineteen sixty six
Speaker 1: he decided to join the army instead of getting drafted,
Speaker 1: so he could at least choose where he wanted to go.
Speaker 1: There was something going on to someplace called Vietnam. I thought, well,
Speaker 1: let's mess go see what's going on over there. So
Speaker 1: you kind of went on an adventure basis. I picture says,
Speaker 1: there's a big, long backpack trip. How that's turned out.
Speaker 1: I was okay till the day I got shot, and
Speaker 1: that after that not so much. The first six months
Speaker 1: Tom was in Vietnam, he didn't see much action, but
Speaker 1: then another company got ambushed in a nearby village and
Speaker 1: so they brought in the rest of our battalion surrounded
Speaker 1: the village. There was a firefight that lasted through the night,
Speaker 1: and the next day they got word that there was
Speaker 1: a battalion of North Vietnamese nearby, so they started to
Speaker 1: pull back. As we're pulling back, somebody wagh in the
Speaker 1: weird decided to walk through artillery back to cover us,
Speaker 1: and a walking back too fast, too far, and I
Speaker 1: got hit by shra friendly fire. Yeah, funny fire. Tom
Speaker 1: got sent home with a purple heart and spent about
Speaker 1: a year in the hospital. He soon met his future
Speaker 1: wife back in the States, and even though he wasn't
Speaker 1: a fan of college, he decided to use the benefits
Speaker 1: from the gi built to go back and get his degree.
Speaker 1: The courses I hated the least were geography. He was
Speaker 1: outdoors and I had this curiosity about the world and
Speaker 1: how things were made, how geology and weather, and a
Speaker 1: geography tended to cover a lot of those areas. Kind
Speaker 1: of the same reason you went to Vietnam. You were
Speaker 1: looking for adventure. Yeah. Right after graduating he became a
Speaker 1: park ranger in the Redwoods area around San Francisco. He
Speaker 1: loved the outdoors, but he got tired of the bureaucracy.
Speaker 1: So after six years he went got his masters in geography,
Speaker 1: and he was figuring out what to do next. While
Speaker 1: it was a park ranger, people kept asking where can
Speaker 1: we get a really good map of the park? And
Speaker 1: parks aren't in that business, he says, the Park Service.
Speaker 1: They make very basic maps, rough sketch of the campground
Speaker 1: where the bathrooms are, maybe a little bit of history,
Speaker 1: and it's sufficient for most people, but a lot of
Speaker 1: people really want to know more about it. They want
Speaker 1: to know the elevation and trails and the mileages and
Speaker 1: you know that kind of stuff. You know, here's a
Speaker 1: business here someplace, somebody should do this. I didn't know
Speaker 1: any better, so after I got my master's degree, I
Speaker 1: just started making maps. More on Tom's story after the break.
Speaker 1: A strong work ethic takes pride in a job well done,
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Speaker 1: your application with you over the phone, will prepare you
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Speaker 1: to the front office. Express Nose Jobs, get to No Express.
Speaker 1: Find your location at expresspros dot com or on the
Speaker 1: Express Jobs app. Tom Harrison started by doing what he knew.
Speaker 1: He started making detailed hiking maps of the San Francisco
Speaker 1: area that he'd grown up and they weren't very good,
Speaker 1: but nobody else had anything like it. So I kept
Speaker 1: selling maps and getting customers. You know, after a while
Speaker 1: I had a business. When he started in the eighties,
Speaker 1: all of Tom's maps were done completely in pen and ink.
Speaker 1: I mean when I was in grad school. The Macintosh
Speaker 1: should first come out, Oh black and white, so cool,
Speaker 1: So everything gots by hand. He would get all the
Speaker 1: maps and guidebooks that he could find on an area
Speaker 1: and to hiking trails. And I look at him and
Speaker 1: go back and forth and say, whoa, Okay, this is
Speaker 1: a government map, and that's probably a map, and the
Speaker 1: two guidebooks, but they don't agree here, here, and here.
Speaker 1: He'd go and do more research looking for were maps
Speaker 1: do agree. He'd make a ton of calls. But sometimes
Speaker 1: when there was just no way to get an accurate
Speaker 1: read on a map, he'd go and figured out himself.
Speaker 1: Just put on the hiking boots and go out and
Speaker 1: hike the trail. So I'd get him a jeep, go
Speaker 1: out and hike the trail for a couple of days
Speaker 1: with a major wheel, and make my notations. And he
Speaker 1: ended up with these super accurate, beautifully rendered topographical maps.
Speaker 1: He copied a bunch and started selling them. Around the
Speaker 1: immediate area, map stores, backpacking stores, boat shops, any place
Speaker 1: that would sell a map of the area I was doing.
Speaker 1: His first maps were well received. One map store said
Speaker 1: they take a dozen, but said he should really think
Speaker 1: about talking to a distributor if he was going to
Speaker 1: make any profit. I didn't even know what a distributor was.
Speaker 1: They put him in contact with one and he sold
Speaker 1: more maps to her. That distributor put him in contact
Speaker 1: with another in La. He said he didn't really need
Speaker 1: any maps of the San Francisco area, but I need
Speaker 1: a map of this and this and this. So I
Speaker 1: went back and I made a map of this and
Speaker 1: this and this. He said, great, keep doing it. Here's
Speaker 1: what else I need. Other companies started seeing his work
Speaker 1: and asked him if they buy his maps for their stores,
Speaker 1: And after about seven years of doing that, it got
Speaker 1: to be the point where I need to help in
Speaker 1: the business. So I asked my wife to quit her
Speaker 1: job and she came to work with me. His wife
Speaker 1: started on the business side of the operation. She handled
Speaker 1: the fulfillment service that they ran out of the garage
Speaker 1: for a while, and after thirty four years, Tom's maps
Speaker 1: can now be found in huge outfitting stores like ARII
Speaker 1: with maps of Death Valley, Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, the Palisades,
Speaker 1: and tons of others over the years. The biggest thing
Speaker 1: that's changed in Tom's business is the technology, which she
Speaker 1: says has actually made the occupation of matt making far
Speaker 1: more accessible to anyone interested in doing it. For one thing,
Speaker 1: it's made our life much easier and much smoother. I
Speaker 1: don't need to bend over this light table all day.
Speaker 1: I can sit down in front of a laptop and
Speaker 1: do it there. There are plenty of hard skills that
Speaker 1: are a must when going into cartography. You definitely have
Speaker 1: to know Adobe Illustrator, and you have to know how
Speaker 1: to use GIS software. Gis geographic information system, basically software
Speaker 1: where you can analyze, manipulate, and manage geographical data. You'd
Speaker 1: almost I have to have a reasonably decent understanding of
Speaker 1: printing and how colors are put on paper. Essentially, you
Speaker 1: can create a beautiful map on the computer that might
Speaker 1: not translate to the printing press. Yeah. But all of
Speaker 1: these hard skills aside, there's one thing that hasn't changed
Speaker 1: at all since Tom first started out. In order to
Speaker 1: be a good map maker and love what you do.
Speaker 1: What you really need is curiosity. You need to know
Speaker 1: understand that what you see and digital data isn't always correct.
Speaker 1: You have to always question everything. What's the truth? Doesn't
Speaker 1: say what the name of the road is on the map.
Speaker 1: What is your favorite thing about making maps? You know?
Speaker 1: For me, maps are a kind of a way of meditation,
Speaker 1: very zen, like I can I completely clear on my
Speaker 1: mind of anything else. I don't think about any of
Speaker 1: the problems or issues. I'm just focusing on a map.
Speaker 1: I think this is a lover's lane taking a left
Speaker 1: on Los And for some reason, that single minded focus
Speaker 1: makes my life easier and clearer. There's something that that's
Speaker 1: very interesting about having yourself spatially oriented to to landscape
Speaker 1: around you. Oh there it is have good pond recreation area.
Speaker 1: But something about looking at the map and say, oh,
Speaker 1: I always wondered where that was, And then you're out
Speaker 1: there and you're it's like you put it in your mind,
Speaker 1: both the map and the landscape, and they come to
Speaker 1: come together, and it's it's sort of embeds itselves and
Speaker 1: our special memory. For some reason, it's actually pretty warm. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like phones make you the center of whatever you're
Speaker 1: doing wherever you're going, and maps allow you to exist
Speaker 1: as a smaller part of something bigger. Yeah. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: phone is throw I'm right here, but a map is like, oh,
Speaker 1: all that's out there. Yeah, I'm I'm in the middle
Speaker 1: of all this. There's no one out here. There's a
Speaker 1: really slight breeze, really little ripples on the pond. Can't
Speaker 1: believe I've never been here before. To see Tom's maps
Speaker 1: and learn more about him, you can go to Tom
Speaker 1: Harrison maps dot com. For On the Job. I'm Otis Gray.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to On the Job, brought to you
Speaker 1: by Express Employment Professionals. This season of On the Job
Speaker 1: is produced by Audiation and Red Seat Ventures. The episodes
Speaker 1: are written and produced by me Otus Gray. Our executive
Speaker 1: producer is Sandy Smallens. The show is mixed by Matt
Speaker 1: Noble for Audiation Studios at the Loft in Bronxville, New York.
Speaker 1: Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Find us on iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts. If you liked what you heard, please consider
Speaker 1: rating and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen. We'll see you next time. For more inspiring
Speaker 1: stories about making yourself essential as you discover your life's work.
Speaker 1: Audiation