I threw away car maps the other day. Maps! Threw them away. It took great strength and effort to do it. But they’re gone.
They were buried deep down in the glove compartment. I had been searching for an air pressure gauge. Instead I found a year’s supply of fast food straws. Enough crumpled napkins to sop up Lake Erie. And maps.
Lots of maps. Maps of St. Augustine. Maps of Florida. Maps of the southeast. Maps of the Civil War and of the Lewis and Clark expeditions. Maps of Kenya and the original map Columbus used on his way to the New World. It had a doodle of a sinking ship and a seagull with this note: “Hoping this wasn’t bad idea. Pickup milk on the way home.”
Frustrated when I didn’t find the air gauge, I started stuffing everything back in. Including the faded, crumpled maps. Then I paused.
I stared at them. Paper dinosaurs. I hadn’t used one in years. Did I need them? Would I ever use them again?
I never screamed anymore, “Honey, quick! Consult the map!” Long gone were those days when out would unfurl a giant ship’s sail. It would fan out like a curtain on a stage, obscuring the road. “Too much! Too much!” I would scream as she desperately tried to rein it in, and I desperately tried to see through a crack or a crease.
“Sorry,” she would cry. “It’s spring-loaded. It’s fighting me!”
You never have that problem with Google Maps and a smartphone.
Yet, I couldn’t quite bring myself to throw them away. I hesitated, almost putting them back.
Occasionally I still use a paper map. Mainly tourist ones in a new and unfamiliar city. I like how they draw big, cartoonish pictures of attractions that make them easy to find. I fold them up into tight little squares, and pull them out in a pinch when I think no one is looking. I huddle in corners, consulting the antique. I look like a spy. Or a drug pusher. Or a lunatic.
I wonder what people will think of me. “Look, a re-enactor!” a father will say to his young daughter. “He’s pretending to be a 20th century tourist following an ancient cartograph. It will lead him straight to a really bad neighborhood where his shoes and his dignity will be stolen forever.”
“I have an iPhone!” I want to scream. “I just like the unrealistic cartoon drawings, OK?!? Now where’s this museum that looks like a wedding cake?”
These days I carry those tourist maps out of habit. But I rarely consult them. My phone can lead me to a good mugging much more efficiently, and with less embarrassment. It can also tell me the weather and traffic patterns along the way.
Yet, there are times when our new technology still lets us down. When maps on papyrus or sheep’s skin inevitably save the day.
I was reminded of this while on a recent trip to North Carolina. I was reading directions to Grandfather Mountain on the Web and I got a good chuckle when I came across this: “We recommend against relying on a navigation system or other form of computer generated directions. Computers are machines that do not get car sick traveling curvy roads. Their software programs do not always recommend the quickest, simplest and most-traveled routes. They frequently default to the shortest mileage between two points (often sending drivers through remote areas over very narrow country roads). Please read through the directions listed below for the route that A REAL HUMAN BEING recommends to get from there to here.”
I loved it. And how true. Part of paper maps was we had to put some sweat equity into the endeavor. We had to be good navigators and plot a course ourselves, not just type in point A and point B. It made us explorers — part of our own destiny. I decide how to get there — even if it’s wrong! — and not a computer.
As I read the directions, it made me long for a big fold-out map with cartoon drawings. Maybe a giant cloud-covered mountain with an old timey grandpa sitting in a rocking chair smoking a corn cob pipe. That would be perfect.
But it wasn’t to be. I never thought to go out to the car and dig up a map. Instead I pulled up Google and let the machine plot me a course.
I threw away the car maps. Goodbye unfurling sail as I drive, and goodbye notes in the corner that read, “Hoping this wasn’t bad idea. Pickup milk on the way home.”