lessons from studying road maps
Dec. 11th, 2006 07:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacRoad maps are another fascination of mine I don't talk about much, from sheer doubt that anyone else could be sufficiently interested. But the response to this post makes it relevant.
When I was about nine years old, and already studying maps incessantly, on a local map I found a road that became an obsession of mine for several years.
We lived at the base of a range of rugged mountains. Most of the few roads up there were either well-known - if narrow, twisty, and hair-pinned - through roads going up and over the summit, or else dead-ended in remote canyons.
But the maps showed one long connecting road between two of the through roads, roughly parallel to the summit about halfway up the mountains. I wanted to find it and ride my bicycle along it. But I'd been a car passenger on both of the through roads it touched, and while I'd seen one end of the connecting road, I couldn't find the other end. Yet there it was on the map.
One day I rode my bike up the nearer of the through roads, the one on which I hadn't found the connecting road. It was ten miles one way from home and over 2000 feet uphill. I was no athlete, even as a scrawny kid: the round trip took me all afternoon.
I had my map and carefully paced between curves on the main road. Still no sign of the connector, just a faint trail leading over a hill. This was all privately-owned land in those days; I didn't want to trespass.
Next summer I convinced my friend Andy - the only friend I had in school - to come on the even longer trip around the other way. We left early in the morning. We took lunches and bottled water. (Did our parents let us do this? They did. Mine knew I was responsible and that I could read a map. I was already chief navigator on all our family vacations.) We rode five miles to the foot of the through road, then up it to the foot of the connector road, and then up that one in turn. It was really steep. We walked our bikes most of the way, through strange and lovely country.
And about five miles along, we found the metal fence. It crossed the road. The gate was locked. What we could see of the road beyond it rapidly dwindled into a dirt trail. It was journey's end for Andy and me.
Today all the land between that gate and the putative other end of the road is public open space. The trail is open and well marked from both ends. You still can't drive along it. And maps no longer show the road going through. But then, and for years afterwards, they all insisted that it did.
It would be years before I heard the famous proverb. But I'd already learned its force, in the most literal possible manner. The map is not the territory.
Today I sometimes still indulge myself by investigating remote back roads, a little farther from home now, and by car. Some of them go through and are richly rewarding. But some don't. They dwindle into trails. They're blocked by gates. They just don't exist. I won't forget the one that's marked on every state map of California I own but, just a few miles from I-5, devolved into impassable dirt ruts. I'd been hoping to drive it across the mountains and home. I turned around and took the familiar highways. There was no time to try another more likely back-road option nearby. I'd used up too much of my extra time on those ruts to risk spending more on any other unknowns.
I figure there are three types of drivers.
First there are those of us who know what we're doing. We know the limitations of maps, of roads, and of cars. We drive obscure back roads for fun, to explore them, in good weather only, and never as a guesswork short-cut in a hurry. We know how long they can take, so we allow the time.
Then there are those who know they're not geographically skilled. Maps are not their native language, and they're intelligent enough to realize this. They stick to the main roads because they're not foolish enough to venture into unknowns they're not at ease with.
Last are the overconfident. They don't know, but think they do. They see a line on a map, they figure it must be a road as good as any other road. They take it, and they get lost or stuck, or their "short cut" only makes them far more late than they would have been without it. Getting trapped in the snow for a week and dying of hypothermia is a horribly disproportionate outcome for this. They should learn their lesson in a milder way. Then it can get impressed on their minds before they take their overconfidence to fatal ends. And that lesson comes in one sentence:
The map is not the territory.
When I was about nine years old, and already studying maps incessantly, on a local map I found a road that became an obsession of mine for several years.
We lived at the base of a range of rugged mountains. Most of the few roads up there were either well-known - if narrow, twisty, and hair-pinned - through roads going up and over the summit, or else dead-ended in remote canyons.
But the maps showed one long connecting road between two of the through roads, roughly parallel to the summit about halfway up the mountains. I wanted to find it and ride my bicycle along it. But I'd been a car passenger on both of the through roads it touched, and while I'd seen one end of the connecting road, I couldn't find the other end. Yet there it was on the map.
One day I rode my bike up the nearer of the through roads, the one on which I hadn't found the connecting road. It was ten miles one way from home and over 2000 feet uphill. I was no athlete, even as a scrawny kid: the round trip took me all afternoon.
I had my map and carefully paced between curves on the main road. Still no sign of the connector, just a faint trail leading over a hill. This was all privately-owned land in those days; I didn't want to trespass.
Next summer I convinced my friend Andy - the only friend I had in school - to come on the even longer trip around the other way. We left early in the morning. We took lunches and bottled water. (Did our parents let us do this? They did. Mine knew I was responsible and that I could read a map. I was already chief navigator on all our family vacations.) We rode five miles to the foot of the through road, then up it to the foot of the connector road, and then up that one in turn. It was really steep. We walked our bikes most of the way, through strange and lovely country.
And about five miles along, we found the metal fence. It crossed the road. The gate was locked. What we could see of the road beyond it rapidly dwindled into a dirt trail. It was journey's end for Andy and me.
Today all the land between that gate and the putative other end of the road is public open space. The trail is open and well marked from both ends. You still can't drive along it. And maps no longer show the road going through. But then, and for years afterwards, they all insisted that it did.
It would be years before I heard the famous proverb. But I'd already learned its force, in the most literal possible manner. The map is not the territory.
Today I sometimes still indulge myself by investigating remote back roads, a little farther from home now, and by car. Some of them go through and are richly rewarding. But some don't. They dwindle into trails. They're blocked by gates. They just don't exist. I won't forget the one that's marked on every state map of California I own but, just a few miles from I-5, devolved into impassable dirt ruts. I'd been hoping to drive it across the mountains and home. I turned around and took the familiar highways. There was no time to try another more likely back-road option nearby. I'd used up too much of my extra time on those ruts to risk spending more on any other unknowns.
I figure there are three types of drivers.
First there are those of us who know what we're doing. We know the limitations of maps, of roads, and of cars. We drive obscure back roads for fun, to explore them, in good weather only, and never as a guesswork short-cut in a hurry. We know how long they can take, so we allow the time.
Then there are those who know they're not geographically skilled. Maps are not their native language, and they're intelligent enough to realize this. They stick to the main roads because they're not foolish enough to venture into unknowns they're not at ease with.
Last are the overconfident. They don't know, but think they do. They see a line on a map, they figure it must be a road as good as any other road. They take it, and they get lost or stuck, or their "short cut" only makes them far more late than they would have been without it. Getting trapped in the snow for a week and dying of hypothermia is a horribly disproportionate outcome for this. They should learn their lesson in a milder way. Then it can get impressed on their minds before they take their overconfidence to fatal ends. And that lesson comes in one sentence:
The map is not the territory.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-11 05:13 pm (UTC)And I'm actually a fairly good follower of maps. And have a good ability to see any 2 dimensional rendition of something (map or floor plan) and turn it into a 3 d thing in my head.
But for some reason, I can't keep left and right straight. I'll say "Turn right" and motion left - Left being the correct direction. Then my husband teases "Oh, the other right". He really gives me a hard time about it. It isn't my map reading or rendering that's the problem, it's the words.
Did I mention I get 99 percentile in mechanical aptitude and 70 percentile in English? That would probably be the problem. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-12-11 07:11 pm (UTC)Whenever anybody gives me directions over the phone, I always try to have a map handy to follow along with, because sure enough somewhere in the process they'll say "left" when they mean "right" or vice versa.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-12 04:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-12 05:03 am (UTC)