Are you ready to switch off your screens and ponder or discuss another writing/conversation prompt from my friend Tyrean Martinson’s book? Here’s my take on it.
Do you like maps as much as my husband and I do? We have dozens of maps decorating walls, folded in our cars, on shelves, single ones on specific areas, comprehensive books such as atlases of the world. And we don’t just like to have them around and look at them, we actually use them almost every time we are headed for a new place.
We rarely use the GPS, by the way, unless we want to reach a specific place in a big city. Otherwise, we rely on our maps. It’s so much more exciting to explore what’s by the wayside than simply going straight from A to B, maybe not even knowing what is around, which compass direction you are headed. GPS might be convenient if you want to be fast. If you want to explore, a map is priceless.
Our car atlas for Washington State has only recently been renewed with the 2023 edition. I still need to check whether some of the roads that never existed, suddenly ended, turned out never to have been an artery road, etc. are still in this copy. Mind, I marked all these failures in past maps including all the roads we took. I should know. I’m our two-man team’s main navigator. Maps have always been fascinating to me, from toddlerdom on – seriously!!!
Of course, most regional maps are way too huge to work with in their fully extended size. Sometimes, one only needs a couple of miles’ coverage when there are a hundred. So, my husband and I tend to fold them (including hiking maps) to wherever we need them and to a very handy size. It adds crinkles, and makes them looked well-used after a while, rips and holes along the creases included. But we always make it an issue to fold the map back into its original folds as it came to us from the sales rack. To be reopened and checked for places yet unexplored the next time.
I feel about maps the same way you and your husband do. They are my favored way of finding my way around. I was a navigator in the Air Force and learned to use maps for the entire world. I still have many maps from that time in my life. They are still in the leather bag I used in those years, 1963 – 1975. Only at the end of that era did the AF begin to use computers aboard the aircraft to get around. I still have fond memories of navigating using the stars and finding them through the astrodome of the airplane and taking a fix using those stars. I recall many flights at night being out over the dark Pacific and looking at those stars in awe and wonder. That era is still high on my memory list.
Wow, Jim, navigating by the stars takes it to an entirely different level! We’ve never done that yet. (And I hope we never have to because that would mean that we are somewhere lost in the wilderness.) My hubs is pretty good at reading the night sky, too. Me … not so much. but maps? Oh yes.
Happy Weekend!