Wonder

I like to look at old maps with depictions of fantastic creatures in the margins. Unfortunately, we assume that, in ignorance, the makers thought that the small people with mouths in their stomachs, dragons, and other creatures lived in these untraveled realms.
I prefer the alternative hypothesis. Being untraveled, the opportunity for wonder was unextinguished. Dragons could be real. Some actual excitement – a miraculous world – could still exist. Marvel was not moot and not exposed to dull rationality.
I could see a team of cartographers in the studio struggling to make tractable the expanse of the unknown. Off to one side was the one who hoped that today would not be the day that another explorer walked through the door with information that swept away the wonder and uncertainty from a vast reach of the South Polar Seas.
To have everything mapped out, known, pinned, and nailed down. How boring!