I’ve got a bit of a thing for maps. It runs in the family, though to a lesser extent than trains.
Uncle N Period has a vast collection of maps (and train timetables, but we won’t go there). Once, we went into a Rand McNally store so he could find a map of Des Moines, just because he had been there once and didn’t have one.
I’m not quite that bad.
I do love to travel, and traveling overseas a few times has done nothing to satisfy my wanderlust – if anything, it’s fed the monster. Maps help me remember my travels, and inspire the desire to travel more. I still have the old maps and guidebooks that I brought with me when exploring new locales.
I’ll always stop to look twice at anything map-related. I loved this article from Apartment Therapy on 10 Unconventional Map Decor Ideas. I can spend hours wasting time and traveling vicariously on Google Maps – especially when I can get a ground-level look at things on street view. And when I stumbled on Kottke’s Maps Ahoy round-up of his best map-related posts, I was gone for days.
I’m a visual person, and can orient myself best when I can see on a map where I am in relation to everything else. I have no hope of being able to find my way around otherwise. When I moved to Las Vegas, I spent hours studying road atlases and online maps of the city to figure out where I was going. Even before the trip, I spent hours plotting my route, and would still spent time every day going over a map to see where I’d been and where I was going.
I fantasize about the day when I can have a giant world map on my wall and be able to put up tons of flag pins to mark where I’ve been. Right now it would still be a bit empty, with pins mostly in the USA and a few in northern Europe and Canada. I want to do it when I can put up a ton of pins to show how worldly I am.
For now, without a real need for paper maps, I live on Google Maps and peruse the internet. But should the need for a paper map arise, I do know how to fold one.
Other Posts Like Me:
- Encyclopedia of Me – R is for Road
- Encyclopedia of Me – T is for Tattoo
- Encyclopedia of Me – V is for Vegas
- Encyclopedia of Me – S is for Sister
- Encyclopedia of Me – N is for Name
You, Recently