
Mapping Huckleberry Finn’s Mississippi River Journey - Amorymeltzer
http://lithub.com/mapping-huckleberry-finns-mississippi-river-journey/
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SwellJoe
_Huckleberry Finn_ has always been one of my favorites...probably my first
"favorite novel". While this was enjoyable to browse, and I had several fun
little moments of, "Oh, yeah! I remember that!", I was hoping for something a
little more technical than artistic. Something one could literally follow in
the real world.

It's one of my odd life goals to actually float the Mississippi river on a
raft (probably more of a house boat), and has been since I first read
_Huckleberry Finn_. I've been traveling in RVs off-and-on for several years
(I'm back on the road in an RV after a couple years sitting in one place), and
doing it by boat is my next big plan, or series of plans, since traveling the
Mississippi and traveling around Central and South America or island hopping
the Caribbean are very different processes requiring different preparation
and, most importantly, very different boats.

Anyway, while I know the Mississippi has drifted some over the years, and
visiting some of the little islands in Huck Finn is probably impossible today,
I still think it'd be a lot of fun to follow the river, stopping in the same
major towns. Surely someone has done it and documented it. But, I guess one
really doesn't need much guidance. You just get on the river and float,
stopping in the right places. Maybe the book itself is documentation enough.

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205guy
Cool article, with some nice insight into Huckleberry Finn (the novel), as
well as the promised maps. Which is why I don't understand the responses here
on HN.

One says the maps where "metaphorical." No the maps were extremely precise, or
at least as precise as could be for being based on a novel. The maps did take
some liberties with scale and distortion, but that was for two obvious
reasons: 1) to fit all the information at several scales into one set of maps,
and 2) to be pieces of art in themselves. So you could say these were very
precise maps with a highly unusual and non-regular projection and lots of
embellishment, but they very literally map the journey in the novel. I would
argue that they are actually very effective at displaying large and small
scale details in the same frame.

Notice I said projection. There certainly exists a mathematical function that
would transform these maps into WGS 84, or whatever datum you are more used
to. Actually, it's intriguing to think about that function and how it would
work.

To the one who thought this had something to do with github, I say you need to
be a bit more open and less focused on tech--a common problem on HN, despite
the proliferation of non-tech articles. Plus, it's not like startups haven't
been copying each other's domain names since forever. I mean it's one thing to
be surprised that the content is not what you expected from the name alone,
it's another to leave a comment about it.

Finally to SwellJoe, I admire your sense of adventure, but I urge caution.
From my own investigations, even with a well-found boat, navigating the
Mississippi is beyond novice-level. It's been channeled and dredged, has lots
of currents, and is plied by commercial traffic. I'm afraid that even a house-
boat wouldn't have the power or maneuverability to deal with that--better to
get a regular live-aboard motorboat. Search for information on the Great Loop.
It seems like most pleasure craft take the Tenn-Tom to avoid the lower
Mississippi.

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mavhc
I'm disappointed that lithub isn't a place to fork literature.

The amazon (heh) reviews of the ebook and pbook aren't great either, problems
with both formats

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webapper
The mapping is metaphoric.

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adam12
I thought this was hosted on github or at least a site run by github.

