On Maps, GPS and Andre Gide

On Maps, GPS and Andre Gide

I never get lost, or only rarely. Few places turn me around, Portland Oregon being one of them. (I’m blaming the rivers and the volcanoes on creating a weird magnetic field that disturbs my sense of true north.) All my life I’ve arrived in a new place and managed to orient myself quickly, so that I’ve been able to get around with only my sense of direction and, when necessary, a map. These days, however, I’m beginning to feel like an anachronism every time I unfold my trusty, old fashioned paper map. In fact, I’m reminded of an episode of FRIENDS, when, in London, Joey had to place his map on the ground and step into it, in order to find himself.

Huinay Huayna, Forever Young, hung above the Urubumba River (2011) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson
Huinay Huayna, Forever Young, hung above the Urubumba River (2011) Photo (c) Karen Abrahamson

Let’s face it, with GPS, Onboard computers in our cars, and smart phones, all of which will give you the best route to take from point A to point B courtesy of MapQuest, the art of map reading is certainly on the wane. Which makes me wonder what the loss of that art will mean to our world.

Sure it might mean less coffee-stained maps, probably fewer traffic accidents and certainly fewer arguments between couples lost on a Sunday drive, but what will it mean to how we see the world?

My fascination with maps has always existed. Travelling as I do, one of my first purchases for any destination is a map that is large enough that I can understand the relationship between places, and that I can see enough details so that I can also get off the beaten path. When I go travelling, I like to trace my route on the map as an indelible reminder of the places I’ve gone and the things I’ve seen. It also reminds of the immensity of experiences I haven’t had, and all the other corners and mountain tops and valleys and towns and people I haven’t seen or met. The map reminds me of the world out there that I’ve, ever so briefly, stepped into.

Thread seller - Marrakesh, Morocco
Thread seller - Marrakesh, Morocco

With the advent of GPS and TomTom etc. I wonder how that affects our relationship with the world around us. With a map we get context. We get how small we are in a much larger world, whereas the GPS and OnBoard Computers I’ve used reduce the world to one small computer screen that points us in one direction and that doesn’t foster those exciting tingles a map gives when you realize there’s an alternative route to the one you’d chosen—one that might be richer for the fact it isn’t the most direct route or the path that most people travel.

Maps have fostered my imagination since the first time one fell out of my parents’ National Geographic Magazine and since the first time I traveled with my parents from British Columbia to Quebec and my mom showed me a map of the continent. I was seven and the vastness of the landscape excited me with all the half-glimpsed things along our route. Maps gave me a sense of where we were in relation to where we’d been. Today they give me a sense of the greater world. Old maps show what the landscape once was and how it has changed. Maps even give a sense of how other cultures view the world differently than most North Americans do today

Path along the Yukon River, following the routes of explorers.

The French Author, Andre Gide wrote that “One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a long time.” That’s what maps are all about, a guide to discovery and exploring something vaster , whereas GPS seems to make a journey all about yourself moving from point A to point B.

So for me, though GPS and MapQuest are great for short trips, I’ll muddle through with a paper map and my own sense of adventure. I’ll live by Gide’s philosophy and take a chance on getting lost or perhaps, like Joey, finding myself in the map.

So how do you prefer to travel? Are you map challenged or a fan? Do you depend on GPS when you’re travelling? Why?

5 Replies to “On Maps, GPS and Andre Gide”

  1. Marcelle, it IS a talent – and a useful one, I think. Getting lost has provided me with some wonderful adventures I would never have had otherwise. My friends and I call those “the scenic route.”

  2. I love maps. I love setting out on a road trip with just a paper map as a guide. I collect maps–country, road, world… I have a file bulging with them. That said, I still, somehow, always manage to get lost. It’s a talent.

  3. I don’t have GPS, an onboard computer, or a smart phone – and don’t want any of them. If I can’t figure out where I am with a map, I figure I deserve to be lost! … My father taught me to read a map as a child, and on every vacation I was allowed to be “navigator” for at least a day, sitting in the front seat of the car next to my dad. … More than 50 years ago (yeah, I AM old, in case that first sentence didn’t clue you) my mother papered a wall in my brothers’ bedroom with maps; many of them were marked with our travel routes during summer vacations. When she moved into a retirement apartment, we all stood in that room looking at those maps as our last memory of that house. … Maps are attached to some wonderful memories for me.

    1. Colleen, I love the image of a room papered with maps and memories. Thanks so much for sharing. It sounds like your experience with maps is much like mine. I sort of feel sorry for people who will never have the tactile sense of handling a map.

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