why read maps?

Something I ought to learn more about is how blind people navigate a city.  Do they develop impressive spatial intelligence?  Is it strictly a matter of obtaining and following step by step directions?  Does it depend?

A customer (this guy is sticking by old fashioned maps to get around) told a story about his daughter.  She landed a new job, entered the address into her GPS device and drove to work.  She drove to work every day for two months.  On the morning her GPS malfunctioned, she could not find her way to work.

Losing my sight is easier to imagine than being in the fix that woman was in.  No one (I think) chooses to become blind, yet people everywhere are choosing to abandon the ability to direct their own physical movement through… well, do we have a word for what isn’t cyberspace?  Oh yeah, space.  aka Reality.

Learning and problem solving is often a matter of parts and steps.  The parts of the parts and the steps within the steps must be isolated, broken down until they are irreducible, and the connections and relationships noted, one by one.  This is especially so when we are setting up a computer to do the problem solving.

Unlike computers, our minds deal effortlessly with wholes.  My point about how laborious it would be to write out every fact that a detailed map could tell us is also a point about how unnecessary that labor is.  Just look at the map and you know.

Mushroom hunting became a favorite pastime of mine this summer.  It is healthy brain exercise to foster the state of relaxed alertness in which you most efficiently spot the mushrooms.  You can tromp along and see none.  You can stop, look around and conclude “No mushrooms here.”  Then keep looking.  Staring is the wrong way to look. You don’t have to execute a search pattern either.  Slow down, wait and trust your eyes.  One of my favorite moments is when you suddenly see a hundred mushrooms in a place that had just seemed bare of them.  I guess most people do not get their thrills in the same ways I do.  Mostly, I believe, because they have not tried.  Silent, low tech encounters with fungi in situ are not big in popular culture these days.  Birdwatchers probably know what I am trying to say.

Printed guides to mushrooms always bear stern warnings about not eating anything until a real live expert has confirmed the identity of your find.  Every living expert must have learned from other experts, who learned from other experts, and so on.  Let us be grateful for the sacrifices that someone, somewhere, some time ago must have made to learn the hard way!

In defiance of the warnings I ate some mushrooms, and survived.  Some had been shown to me by someone who had eaten that mushroom.  Others, like this Bears Head Tooth were so unlike any other possible growth that I judged it foolproof.  Most of the time, however, I would puzzle over my guidebook and my finds.  There are photographs, but every specimen seems misshapen.  Colors are never quite the same.  There are written descriptions of properties:  stems, collars, the little fin-like things or lack thereof underneath,  how it smells, what happens when you bruise it etc.  There are a lot of parts to the identity of a mushroom!  Just when you think you have narrowed the possiblities down to one you flip around the book a bit and think it could be something else.  What is the difference?  Is that stipe (stem) really bulbose? Are those lamellae nearly detached or fully detached?

I have resolved to sign up for the first expert-led mushroom class, walk, foray or whatever I can find next spring.  The difference between learning mushrooms from a book and learning with live specimens under the guidance of an expert is the difference between learning from the parts up and from whole down.  When you really know a mushroom, you know it as a whole.  You know it on sight.  That and where it grows, how it grows, how it smells, how best to cook it, all your history with it are parts of one whole piece of knowledge.

Check the book before you eat it anyway.

All this to praise the uniqueness of the map as a tool for learning:  The parts and the whole are simultaneous and integral.  There is no either – or.  Reading maps trains your mind for more effective thinking even in realms non-geographical.

There are but a few dozen map stores in the country.  You are now paying a virtual visit to the most obscure  corner of the entire commercial landscape.

I have daydreamed of how the biggest stroke of luck my store and its dwindling cohort could enjoy would be to have a popular character in a sitcom or the like work in a map store.  Then I would never again have to meet someone and hear them say “You mean there is such a thing as a map store?”

This is no sitcom (whatever the NY Post thinks).  Improved perspective courtesy of Streetsblog

Every day people walk into the map store and say “I’m looking for a good map of…”

No one ever asks for a crummy map, or even a so-so one.

I never thought about this more than I do about other bits of habitual verbal filler.  “Good for what?” I usually ask, in order to be helpful.  I might mention that I try not to deal in bad maps at all unless there is no alternative for that particular coverage, in which case even a poor map can be the Best Map.

Today I realized that customers who ask for a good map are those who actually want to read the maps!  They want to do more than decorate the wall.  They go on to complain about an inadequate map they already have, or more often these days, some electronic “solution.”  These are customers who seriously plan to learn from their map, or to help others learn.

(Please do not think I want to turn away customers who are only in the market for sofa sized art).

You know times are changing when you find yourself in a line of smoothly flowing traffic – of bicycles.  A line of only three, but still:  All were pedaling along in well practiced morning commute fashion, and not on a bike path, painted lane, or one of Providence’s less than totally helpful new Bike Routes.  They had converged on a zigzag route from the upper Hope Street area to downtown that neatly avoids traffic, minimizes hills, and is as short as any alternative.  Brewster St. > Summit Ave. > Ivy > Forest > Camp > Brown > Halsey > Congdon or Pratt.

The new signs denoting “Bike Route Downtown” as well as google maps (walking or by car) would have directed them straight down Hope to Angell, along with hundreds of cars and buses, and up past the charming Ladd Observatory which happens to be the highest elevation for miles around.

I like to see people thinking for themselves.  They might even have figured it out by looking at a plain old map.

To enter the contest just post a comment telling what you do or want to do with map tacks.

Two winners will be chosen:

Winner #1 will be chosen from entries that include the obvious: “Stick them into a Map.”  You may want to describe what the tacks represent, the intended audience of the display, or the good things that happen when people look at your map.

Winner #2 will be chosen from entries, the stranger the better, that have nothing to do with inserting tacks into a map. (Family friendly, please)

The prizes: This attractive, up to date Rand McNally Laminated World Map.

The winners will be selected when 25 comments on this post have been published.  Comments will be published and prizes awarded at the sole discretion of the owner of this site.  The winner will be notified by email. Contest is open only to residents of the United States and void where prohibited.

Here is the kind of story I might invent, but no need, this one is true.

Readers Digest organized a 989 mile, three car race with twelve obscure waypoints across Britain.  One team had to rely on satnav (as GPS is  called Over There), one team had road maps, and one team had to stop for directions.

Which team had the most fun?  Thanks to those of us who were raised to be self reliant and not importune others unless absolutely necessary, the average person is not yet weary of being asked for directions. Indeed, when a stranger asks for directions nearly everyone puffs with local pride, eager to help.  There may be no better way to initiate an amusing chat and learn firsthand about people and places as we travel!  I should do it more often.

Which team came away with marvelous souvenirs of their unique adventure?  Those maps, perhaps a little dogeared and marked with pencil or highlighter will always awaken memories and make them easier to share.  Whether those travelers want to return to an inviting little spot they had to hurry past, or resolve forever to avoid a certain district, the means will be at hand.  If the trip is to be repeated, the team that studied the maps will be best able to apply what they learned toward evaluating alternate routes to shave time, choose nicer scenery or any combination of goals.

The GPS team came in last, did not get to meet any local characters, and will have trouble remembering where they saw what.

The team without maps won the race.  That’s OK.  The lesson is:  Read maps AND get out of your car and talk to people. You will arrive first (if you want to) and gain lasting enrichment from your travels.

Ever click on some business blog, start reading and quickly stop, wondering “Will anyone ever actually read this except the googlebot?” You know Boring when you see it, but what does the bot know? Are they working on a bot that will detect SE Optimized Keyword-Rich text that no human would ever slog through so they can deprecate it accordingly? Is such a bot possible?  Might such a bot discourage cyber clutter?

Today I overcome my fear of being one of one of those bloggers.  Pride demands I be more than just another guy starting a blog in hope it will improve the pagerank of his ecommerce site.  Have I anything to say? Well, visitors to the Map Center have long known how easy it is to get me going on a lecture, declamation or tirade on the subject of maps (or anything else, come to think of it). Some have come back for more!

For a long time I have been thinking about how maps are a medium that contributes like no other to human consciousness. I hope you find this as interesting as I do.

And hello to you too Mr. Bot.