Black and grey tattoo of a shaded compass on a gridded map, with the words 'not all those who wander are lost' written beneath it.

Compass on a map with quote

Black and grey · Photo

A detailed compass rose sits in a metal case on top of a gridded map with faint coastlines and degree markings. The compass uses fine linework with soft grey shading to suggest depth, and the map is drawn with darker outlines and smudged grey tones. A handwritten-style line of text runs along the bottom of the design.

Compass Map Quote Text

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The last map my father drew had the forest left blank. He said the trees did not want to be measured, and a blank was more honest than a lie drawn in ink. I was twelve and thought him foolish, so when the surveyor's brass compass went missing from the hook by the door, I took it into the beeches behind Thorncombe without asking anyone.

Keep reading

The needle would not settle. It swung toward the church spire, then toward the mill, then lay flat against the glass as if it had given up. I counted the old boundary stones the way I had been taught, and by the third hour the light had gone the colour of weak tea. Somewhere a dog barked that could have been ours or a stranger's. I sat on a root and opened the case, and the engraved rose on its face looked up at me with all eight points aimed back the way I had come.

My father found me at dusk, not by the path but by the sound of my crying, which I resented him for hearing. He did not scold. He took the compass, tapped the glass twice, and handed it back. 'It never lost you,' he said. 'You stopped trusting it long enough to look at the ground.' Then he unrolled the map from under his arm and pencilled a small circle where we stood, with my name beside it.

I still draw maps for a living, and I still leave the wood blank on the first draft. The brass case sits on my desk now. When someone asks where I am heading, I point to the spire, the mill, and that pencilled circle, which is always, somehow, where I end up.