I. Alfred’s Map
In 1921, an English antiquarian named Alfred Watkins noticed something while studying maps of the British countryside. He observed alignments of certain sites which, to his eye, appeared to fall into long, improbably straight lines—cutting across hills and hedgerows, linking unrelated geographic landmarks and significant structures.

Watkins was not a professional archaeologist. He was a photographer, a collector, a meticulous walker of fields and footpaths; a man with time, patience, and love for the untrodden path.

He began to trace these lines more fanatically, eventually expanding his findings into a theory that ancient people once traveled along such paths and used them to move efficiently across unmapped terrain. He called them ley lines, borrowing from the Old English lēah: a clearing, a place where the land opens.

To be clear, the idea was very…homegrown. Earnest, obsessive, unruly. There were self-published books and manuals. Hand-drawn maps and painstaking explanations connecting everything from Stonehenge and Avebury to Roman roads, forts, and medieval churches. Watkins seemed genuinely delighted by what he was finding, as if the landscape had confided a secret that only he could see.

His enthusiasm was not warmly received. Archaeologists pointed out (and they were, of course, right) that with enough points on a map, a line is inevitable. Disconnected dots will always form a pattern when you’re the one holding the pen.

II. Belief
The origins of the word “belief” come from the Old English geleafa. It merges two ideas: lēof, meaning dear or beloved, and lief, meaning willingly. By this definition, to believe was not to assert certainty, but to give one’s trust. To allow something to matter.

(Or: If knowledge asked, ‘is this true?,’ belief asked, ‘is this worth holding close?’)

III. Charting
It’s the beginning of the year, a time that reliably fills me up with what could be. Everything still within the realm of possibility. I’m thinking about Watkins, and about the way he chose to look.

Maybe he was simply offering a proposal: that it might be more interesting, more generative, to consider the land as coherent rather than random.

The landscape does not insist on making sense. The map does not volunteer its patterns. Meaning does not arrive assembled. It asks for a willingness to observe, to linger, to trace what’s still abstract.

Belief can be its own form of orientation. A way of holding the pen deliberately. Of deciding which points matter enough to connect. Of drawing the first line.

I’ll bring the pens,
MH