Anavasi with Penelope Matsouka – Mountain Stories, Mountain Futures
In this episode Jason König interviews Penelope Matsouka, co-founder of Anavasi, about map-making in the mountains of Greece.
We start by talking about Penelope’s experience of the mountains as a student, and about the first steps in setting up Anavasi, which has had a transformative impact on the accessibility of the mountains of Greece over the last few decades.
She discusses the past and future challenges for cartography, including the inaccessible and incomplete military maps which were the only option available before Anavasi, the early days of working with GPS and GIS, the hard work of walking along mountain paths with children in tow, and the importance of maintaining map-reading literacy in the future, in an age where we are more and more dependent on ‘following a dot on a screen’.
Penelope talks about her favourite mountains in Greece, especially Mount Olympus, and about the extraordinary experience of photographing Olympus from the air, after many years of walking backwards and forwards over the paths.
Ama Dablam camp, Himalayas
We discuss Penelope’s experience of climbing outside Greece, in the Alps and the Himalayas, and also her love of the small islands of Greece.
Finally Penelope offers some thoughts on the challenges and possible solutions for mountain regions in Greece faced with depopulation: ‘When there are no people living in the mountains, no one is present to defend them. And then those who wish to exploit them, they appear, and they are indifferent to their beauty and to the sustainability of the resources … Hikers and mountaineers are the custodians of the mountains. So the priority for the future is to create the conditions that will allow more and more people to get to know the mountains’.
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Sound editor: Zofia Guertin
Video editor: Mary Woodcock Kroble