by Ken Springer
Contributing Writer
“What’s a map, Dad?”
A Cartographer’s
Nightmare
I’ve never actually heard a youngster say that, but I’m sure it’s happened many times. For most people, maps are an anachronism, a thing of the past. When we get in our vehicles for a trip somewhere we’ve never been, no pondering over a map is involved. We tell our OnStar system or our GPS unit where we want to go, and an electronic voice guides us every step of the way.
Several years ago, I wrote an article about spatial awareness. Spatial awareness is the ability to understand, reason and remember the visual and spatial relationships among objects or spaces. We have at least one generation that has never developed a sense of direction beyond their own body.
One bright, clear morning in 2009, I was walking west on Broad Street in downtown Columbus, Ohio. A young man in a three-piece suit was coming down the sidewalk from the opposite direction. He was shielding his eyes from the morning sun with both hands. As we passed, he stopped momentarily and asked me which direction he was headed. I politely informed him he was going east, but what I wanted to say was, “Well, young man, the sun is in your eyes and it’s early morning, which direction do you think you’re going?”
All of the accumulated knowledge and skills of previous generations, dating back thousands of years, can be replaced by technology and lost within the present generation if this knowledge is not maintained. If our navigation capabilities are based solely on current technology, we risk facing a time when we may need it and it won’t be available.
I use technology and appreciate it, but not in all situations. I was a pilot before GPS was common in small planes. I sometimes used VOR, a radio signal system for navigation, although I preferred dead-reckoning using rivers, cities, and other landmarks.
I also appreciate and understand how technology relies on many external factors beyond our human brain, and sometimes it fails. Solar flares can disrupt GPS and the Internet. The Carrington Event of 1859 demonstrated the vulnerability of the telegraph to solar flares and subsequent coronal mass ejections. Telegraph operators were shocked, and powerful electric surges started fires.
There is a humorous scene in an episode of “The Office” in which Michael and Dwight use GPS to locate a client. Michael is behind the wheel, and when the GPS voice tells him to turn right, a short argument ensues in which Michael insists that he should turn right immediately, rather than drive a few more yards to an obvious highway. Unfortunately, for Michael and Dwight, the immediate right turn takes them down a boat launch ramp and right into a lake, submerging the car.
Death by GPS is not unheard of: A couple died of hypothermia when their GPS misrouted them in a remote part of Nevada. A North Carolina man was killed in 2022 when his GPS sent him across an abandoned bridge, and it collapsed. The takeaway from these “GPS routes gone wrong” is that we should carry a map in the vehicle and use common sense, turning around when you are being directed in the general direction of danger.
Butterflies, bats and birds possess sophisticated navigation systems compared to humans. Bats use echolocation to map their surroundings through high-frequency sounds. (There is a growing number of sightless people developing the use of echolocation to navigate safely in most surroundings.) Birds use a combination of skills and neural systems to navigate, including the Earth’s magnetic field, stars and the sun. Likewise, Monarch butterflies utilize the sun and their internal clock as a compass.
Researchers at Harvard Medical School recently identified an internal compass in the human brain, albeit not as extensive as those previously identified in birds, bats and butterflies. Very specialized brain cells, known as “head-direction” cells, monitor body movement, resulting in enhanced spatial awareness and a more accurate sense of direction.
Yes, we’ve an internal compass, but I wouldn’t recommend attempting to migrate with the Monarch butterflies to Mexico or Southern California each winter based on it. And that is a good segue to the topic of maps. When the GPS fails, or you feel you need to reconnect to the wonderful world of maps, they’re still around.
The oldest map of the then-known world is a clay tablet known as the Imago Mundi. It dates back to 600 BC and shows Babylon as the center of the Mesopotamian world. As exploration increased and more of the world was explored, parchment and animal hide maps became increasingly popular. Modern maps, by and large, are made of paper and remain ubiquitous, although often ignored and relegated to the glove compartment.
The Polynesians navigated throughout the Polynesian Triangle without the aid of physical maps. They sailed for thousands of miles across the open Pacific Ocean, establishing settlements in the Hawaiian Islands, New Zealand, and Easter Island, without so much as a nautical chart. The Polynesian maps were in their brains; that is, for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years, it was songs and oral traditions handed down by their ancestors that made them such skilled navigators.
The Polynesians were also astute observers of the natural world, using stars and observing wind patterns, ocean swells, and birds to successfully navigate the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean.
I love maps, and I know many others who share my fondness for them. I love the sound of unfolding a map and trying, often in vain, to refold it. I enjoy just looking at a map, and on many travels, I have crawled into my tent at night perusing a map for hours before deciding the next day’s route.
Maps offer detailed representations of everything that surrounds us and, by using maps, we quickly learn, for example, here in West Virginia, if we want to travel to Colorado, we must head in a westerly direction.
But maps offer so much more than just getting from point A to point B. Maps stimulate our imagination; a map can provide the potential for learning and adventure, whether on the road or a backcountry hike.
Some years ago, I was driving back from Alaska and stayed in a National Forest Service campground in Northern Arizona. Going over my atlas that evening before turning in, I found a town in New Mexico called Pie Town. I was traveling back to Ohio, and Pie Town would only be a short detour from my easterly route home.
Without a map, I would have never known there was such a place. And, true to its name, I had a gustatory adventure of epic proportions in this quaint town, three pieces of pie for breakfast and a whole pie for the road.
Maps can take you to towns you may have never heard of. If you really want to “go to Hell,” Michigan can accommodate you because Hell is just a few miles northwest of Ann Arbor. I’ll pass on that one.
Then, there’s Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, named after a once-popular TV game show, and you don’t want to miss Lizard Lick, North Carolina. Georgia welcomes you to visit Hopeulikit, and they do hope you like it.
GPS can cause our sense of direction and spatial awareness to atrophy, like an unused muscle. Perhaps we should leave the GPS off occasionally and use the map instead. Technology can reduce skills that we once possessed. For example, when I was in grade school, my cursive was considered excellent. However, now my handwriting is illegible. The keyboards on my cell phone and laptop have reduced my former longhand skills to meaningless scribble.
I hope that our ability to read maps, our sense of direction, and our spatial awareness do not become extinct. I hope future generations can glance up at the night sky and point out the North Star to their children. I hope that technology does not rob us of knowing the four cardinal points, North, South, East and West. I hope that a person walking on a sunny morning knows that if the sun is in their eyes, they are heading east.
As I write this article, my brother, Dave, is setting sail in the South China Sea on a solo adventure, navigating through the Philippine archipelago and visiting islands along the way. Although he has equipped his boat with state-of-the-art navigation technology, you can bet that Captain Dave has the capabilities to navigate safely using dead reckoning. Here’s to fair winds and following seas, brother.
Ken Springer
ken1949bongo@gmail.com
