tl;dr: if you find yourself in the position of wanting to teach yourself to make and use maps, I invite you to check out my DIY guide: “QGIS and Avenza: using free mapping software for land management planning“. If you want to contribute to the document’s further development, I am happy to include you as a commenter.

With the help of some friends, I taught myself to digitally create maps to the standard that is accepted by the forestry profession. I like use free, open-source software, in this case QGIS. This avoid the $500 annual commercial licensing fee of ArcGIS, and also lets me participate in an idealistic software movement that strives to make information technology a purely liberatory factor in human existence.

I still have a lot to learn. For instance, I don’t know any of the Python programming language. Knowing Python would greatly expand the range of my possible uses for QGIS. However! If you need to make maps to help plan the sustainable management of farmland or forestland, it has been my experience thus far that you don’t need to know Python. You just need to read my guide and go mess around with it. I offer this to you as a free resource. If you find the guide useful, you could practice reciprocity by directing potential clients, patrons, or students my way. You could also just pay the blessing forward to other worthy recipients.

In closing, I want to offer a quote from Ivan Illich, in his 1971 book “Deschooling Society”: “Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting. Most people learn best by being “with it,” yet school makes them identify their personal, cognitive growth with elaborate planning and manipulation.” Go out on the land and try this stuff out with other stakeholders!