7.0 If you do not know where you are, use a plane table to locate your position by resection.
7.1 Originally a plain table. Reflecting its simplicity.
7.1.1 Cover the table with zinc (impervious to heat or cold) and on it mount a sheet of drawing paper. Carefully draw the map grid by hand on the mounted paper and then cut up the map itself into squares and gum them down, fitting each piece into its correct position on the corresponding grid underneath.
7.1.2 The distortion of the paper due to gumming causes slight irregularities and overlaps in the piecing together but across the entire map there will be no accumulation of error.
7.2 Resection. Here, not in the sense of cutting something away, of surgically removing a portion of an organ or tissue.*
8.0 Pick a point from which three previously fixed points can be seen.
8.1 OK. Here, by the car. Then
8.2 the memorial to the 85th Battalion (Nova Scotia Highlanders) at D.12.c.1.3,
8.3 the prayer flag above the stupa outside the cave on the northeast spur of Copper Mountain, and
8.4 where you were last seen that morning.
9.0 Orient the table by compass (the one with its error), and from the three fixed points draw back rays. Not lines (ours, theirs, these). Not arrows. Rays. Not to be basked in.
9.1 If these three rays pass through a point, this point is your position.
9.1.1 Were this the case then, with this map, fire might be brought to bear onto the object of desire that cannot be observed directly.
9.1.2 You can hear the Wind Horse moving among the willows.
9.2 If they do not pass through a point, the rays will form a small triangle called the “triangle of error.”
9.2.1 Again, although small and here contained, error. And, I think, fear.
9.3 Your true position can be determined by the following rules:
9.3.1 If the “triangle of error” is inside the triangle formed by the three fixed points, your position is inside the triangle of error; and if it is outside, your position is outside the triangle of error.
9.3.1.1 For many years I thought this section
9.3.1.1.1 these “triangles” and triangles and positions inside and outside fixed or not with their “error” or error taken singly or together or perhaps in sequence
9.3.1.1.2 describing what is inside as inside or outside as outside, creating for me confusions about what I now know are actually separate (as in two different) triangles, one made by points one by the rays themselves
9.3.1. made no sense, but was either a printing error or charm.
9.3.2 In the latter case the position will be such that it is either to the left of all the rays when facing the fixed points, or to the right of them all.
9.3.3 Of the six realms formed by the rays, there are only two in which this condition can be fulfilled.
9.3.3.1 These are the realms of humans and of the hungry ghosts (preta).
9.3.3.2 The latter are immaterial beings, unsatisfied and restless, desperate and famished, wandering endlessly across the ground between unfixed positions, nursing their error.
9.3.4 Your exact position is determined by the condition that its distances from the rays must be proportional to the length of the rays, i.e. the position on the sketch must be nearest to that side of the triangle formed by the shortest ray, and farthest from that formed by the longest ray.
9.3.4.1 [This section intentionally left blank.]
9.4 Having thus determined your position, place the sight rule along the line joining it and the most distant of the points used; set the sight rule on the point by revolving the plane table; clamp and test the other two points. If there is still an error (which should, however, be much smaller), go through the process again.
* Cf. “In the Soft Parts of the Body,” p. 61.