海角大神

Confession: I use maps. Not the tiny, annoyingly limited ones on smartphones; I use real paper maps that you open from a rectangle and rarely refold properly. Maps you can sit and gaze at before journeys or whip out to rapidly scan on the road in unfamiliar territory. Paper maps are reliable, aesthetic, endlessly engaging to me, and need no recharging. They simply and placidly orient and inform. I鈥檝e always packed maps of destinations when traveling abroad. I even carry an Indiana map in my glove compartment after almost 40 years here. You鈥檇 be surprised how often I need to consult it when I鈥檓 out of my home county.聽

I鈥檝e traveled in and out of the state with my grandson often enough to have long since introduced him to this archaic way of getting from place to place. His first response as a 7- or 8-year-old was 鈥淛ust use the GPS.鈥� But that was no help, since the one in my old Honda Fit is hopelessly outdated. As for a smartphone, I didn鈥檛 even own one until recently. I鈥檓 still getting up to speed with its capabilities, and navigation is low on the list as long as I have real, handheld, creased, and intricately detailed road maps at hand. And so Connor is learning to use them too. Opening one myself on the steering wheel is akin to texting while driving, perhaps even more distracting for me. I鈥檝e done it, but I鈥檝e reformed. That鈥檚 what passengers riding shotgun are for.聽

On our travels within the United States we use fresh maps from a bookstore, or better yet, AAA. They are free for members, and I鈥檝e visited my local office multiple times to avail myself of this perk. Our next trip will be to visit family and friends in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and I鈥檝e just picked up new copies of those states鈥� road maps. I鈥檝e yellow-highlighted our route from the airport in Providence, Rhode Island, to Old Saybrook and Durham in Connecticut, then up to Amherst, Massachusetts, and back to Providence. It is pretty familiar territory for me, as I鈥檝e spent multiple summers doing geologic fieldwork in the hemlock forests and at roadside outcrops up and down the Connecticut River Valley. Still, I wouldn鈥檛 think of driving around those states without paper maps. It would be too out of character, too presumptive. It would be like traveling without a good book or moral compass.

Going over the route with now 13-year-old Connor so that he can follow along and occasionally answer a routing question while I鈥檓 driving our rental car may take some perseverance on my part. He looks at road maps the same way he looks at my old college typewriter or my mom鈥檚 rotary phone. But his next tutorial on navigating with paper is imminent, and I鈥檓 determined that he learn the ropes. By the time he鈥檚 driving himself I鈥檒l have a stash of new maps of Indiana and surrounding states for his glove compartment. Who knows when a cellphone might quit or a GPS system run amok? Connor will always have recourse to a map and a childhood memory of how to interpret a map鈥檚 scale and symbols, how to differentiate between state and national roads, how to measure distances, and how to plot a course from A to B. You just can鈥檛 tell when you might have to draw on such arcana.聽

I could really get Connor鈥檚 goat by apprising him of directional prompts derived from the sun, moon, and stars. But enough is enough for a newly minted teenager. For this next trip at least, we鈥檒l stay grounded in maps.