The Map Is Not the Territory, but It Helps

My grandfather kept a road atlas in the door pocket of every car he ever owned. When the spine cracked he taped it. When the roads changed he penciled them in. By the end, the atlas was less a map of the country than a map of his life in it: the routes he took, the detours he remembered, the diner outside Albuquerque circled twice.

Phones have made us better at arriving and worse at knowing where we are. Studies of navigation suggest that people who follow turn-by-turn directions form weaker mental maps of the places they travel through. We get there; we just could not tell you how.

I have started keeping a paper map in the car again. I rarely use it. But when I do, I see the whole shape of a place at once, the river I am following, the town I will skip, the road not taken, and I feel, briefly, located.