Maps, Maps, Maps, Maps!

I've always loved maps. Since long before I joined the Marines and became an Aerial Navigator, maps have always fascinated me. Caroline and I are planning a trip out west to see the incredible National Parks of Utah, with stops in surrounding northern New Mexico, southwestern Colorado, and northern Arizona. For the last week or so, I've been nearly obsessed with maps of the area I got from AAA.

My passion for maps started when I was a kid. My parents took us on a good number of cross-country trips. In 1967 we went all the way from Staten Island to Yellowstone and Grand Teton. In 1971 we went to Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, then down through California, to the Grand Canyon, and back. I will never get back to talking about maps if I keep listing the trips we took and the places we saw. I'll just say I am blessed to have seen so much, and I'm truly grateful.

Well, on those trips, I remember the 1967 trip when I was 10 years old specifically, each time we stopped for gas the filling stations used to have free maps for customers. Before the days of GPS and the Internet, maps were an essential part of cross-country travel. I remember running in excitedly to get my hands on the maps for the next state of few states. Then as we drove along away from there, I learned to follow our route, to read the map index, to calculate how far we had come, and how far to the next place we were to turn or to stop. I took great joy in it, in knowing where we were, in where we'd been, and in seeing where we were going next.

It's something I have carried forward into these retired years. Sure, now we have tools and resources and don't need maps in the same way we did back then. But for me, there is still nothing better than spreading out my map and carefully choosing which roads to take between stops. Which is the most scenic? Which is the shortest? Which is the one that will take us past the Walmart or hotel or campsite?

When I read books, be they fiction or non-fiction, historical or hysterical, I can't tell you the number of times I've set one down to grab a map, or to open a map application on my phone or computer, so that I can see where the place I'm reading about is. Because until I see where it is on a map, for me it's an abstraction. But once I've seen it, I know where it is and it's real and surrounded by a million very real points of reference, i.e. the world around me, the same world around wherever it is, too. I do the same on television. Whether it is where someone on a program is, is from, has traveled to, whatever, many times I feel a compulsion to grab a map or a map application and see just where that is. Is it a place I've been, a place I'd like to go, or someplace that I've never heard of? Was so and so I knew in the Marines from there, or was that where President Roosevelt did... (fill in the blank).

So, if you look on the shelf in my man cave, or in the map pocket in my truck, there are maps. There are always going to be maps around me. And when someday comes, and my travels are finished, I am sure there will still be maps. And if you ask me where I've been, or tell me where you plan to go, do me a favor, please? Would you get that map of the Northwestern United States down for me? I'd like to see where you're going, and if you don't mind, to show you where I've been, and where I never got to go.

I love maps.