Learning my way around

Most of my friends now have GPS in their cars or on their handheld brain devices, so any discussion of how to get somewhere involves asking the geographical oracle for instruction. Personally, I don't believe in GPS. It seems like another way to devolve basic human skills, and being able to find your own way around feels like an important one. I've been learning my way around Portland for about seven months now (I’ve just about mastered the Southeast quadrant), and I've been enjoying the delights of using an actual paper map. Besides the advantage of being able to choose my own routes and learn all the byways as well as the highways, I can see the big picture, literally, and orient myself in the geography. I can see the direct paths as well as the meandering ones. I can see that I’m going to be within a block of the river, so a quick zip down a side street might be worth the extra minute it takes to glimpse the sparkling water -- and along this serendipitous way, to see an intense psychic conversation happening between two pure white cats.

A GPS just wants to get you there. A map shows you where you are right now, the X that marks the spot where you stand in the sacred landscape, between the river and the mountain. I always feel like an explorer, an adventurer, as I unroll my map and roll it back up again, stow it away and head out on the road. As I learn my way around my new home town, I see it as a metaphor for learning my way through my life, as we all do. It's not about getting to the next point as quickly as possible, using someone else's directions, but rather, to listen for guidance from within that may tell me to take that curving road under the autumn trees, rather than the more direct route that could save me some time. That time may be better spent in truly observing, keeping my eyes open for signs, trusting in the rightness of my inner navigation.

Comments

[Cari Ferraro]

I love my paper maps, too, Lunaea. At calligraphy conferences sometimes someone will give a class in creative cartography. I have never made a map, but how interesting it would be!

[Lunaea]

You should make one, Cari! Your own interpretation of your world. http://www.woodge.com/books/maps/map_Tolkien_MiddleEarth.jpg

[April]

I have really fond memories of learning my way around Portland too, especially my quadrant (SE - hi, neighbor!). I don't have a car though, so it's all been by bus or on foot. It's endlessly fascinating for me to compare my understanding of the city layout to someone who drives through it! This post is inspiring to draw up a map of my version of Portland.

[Ramona Gault]

Well said, Lunaea! Location is so much more than the quadrant on a map--it's sensing where you are on the land in your body. Making one's own maps sounds very appealing too--perhaps I'll try that.

[Elizabeth Owen]

Dear Lunaea,
My note on "Globie" or Deloram (sp) Maps, which is one the way to Portland and has a scaled down version of Earth inside, got eaten by the computer. All this and Lobster too.
See what happens in the Right Portland!!!!
Happy and thoughtful and magical Samhain
eco

[Laurie Pollack]

I agree with you wholeheartedly. We are raising a whole generation who will be map-illiterate, with no feel for the directions: north, south, east and west. Strangely, although I usually have a good sense of direction, I seem to lose this when I fly somewhere especially somewhere I don't know: wonder if being up in the air disrupts some kind of internal "homing" mechanism"?

[Lunaea]

And yet birds have fabulous homing mechanisms! It may be because we are terrestrial creatures, so we depend on our earthly landmarks to orient us. I am still a bit confused here in Portland about directions after so many years of living by the ocean, although in Santa Cruz, the ocean is both west and south!

[sharon beller (moonwillow)]

lunaea,
i am so glad to see you beginning to enjoy your new home, it has been a difficult road for you. i dont think i kow a stronger woman than you, goddess bless and keep you within her cloak....moonwillow (sharon beller)

[Loran]

I prefer maps to the GPS but recently navigating a strange city I relied on my GPS. It is not totally trustworthy! I took some wrong turns which ultimately helped me stay off the freeway longer so it was all good. At least I had a notion of where I was going and could gauge my direction by the Wasatch Mountans.

[Elena]

I have never actually used a GPS thingie, but I spent 10 years sans auto and I relearned something I knew as a child--there are secret roads and byways out there, and there ways are --elritch. I make a point of going for a long walk every Saturday and Sunday somewhere in Salem--on Halloween, I toured a local cemetary, and I never worried about getting lost, because I KNEW I was between the worlds!