M is for Map

I have always loved reading maps. Not just when I travel, but anytime that I am curious about the location of a place I am thinking about. I used to enjoy the fold-out and pull-out maps included in feature stories of National Geographic when I was a kid.


I also remember the map at the beginning of the 1965 Houghton Mifflin paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and how that map drew me into the series one summer. I recall flipping back and forth from text to map constantly, while reading, and how that connection with the physical journey of the characters helped me visualize both the characters themselves and the landscape they travelled across. From the hairy feet of the home-loving Hobbits to the grotesque, grabby fingers of pathetic Gollum, from the serene and peaceful Shire to the horrific furnace inside Mount Doom in Mordor, my recall of that epic story is absolutely vivid. I never needed or wanted to see the movie versions.


Very recently, while I was going through a cabinet on the front porch, I came across old familiar ADC road atlases, now rendered useless by our phone maps. But I remember what a godsend they were when I first moved to the area, and how they helped me to patchwork together one area I had walked, biked or driven and committed to my visual-spacial memory with another, and so on, until I knew exactly how to navigate from Old Town Alexandria to Upper Northwest D.C. and back again through the tangle of bridges.

I wonder if I should have been a surveyor, or perhaps a cartographer?!

Life Lesson: Use every resource available to navigate your way.