![]() ![]() In such a world, there is no mistake recalculation can’t fix. ![]() Traveling with GPS has changed the way I look at life. In fact, you do not have to do much thinking at all - just hang onto the wheel and let your mind drift, knowing the machine will do the anticipating and worrying, knowing too that any wrong turn, even one that takes you along a clover leaf and onto a strange, swift-moving highway, can be righted by the algorithm. ![]() ![]() It’s harder to get lost, more difficult to look out the window and feel scared. I have welcomed, used and even relied on GPS, knowing it’s changed the nature of the map and my beloved road trip. An hour with an atlas just makes me want to go. Along that road, I see myself visiting San Simeon to see where William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies entertained Charlie Chaplin, or that fingernail of coast where William Finnegan still waits for the wave that will carry him to God. You cannot look at the names of the towns and ranges without imagining yourself absorbed in experience - the jagged line of the Sawtooths, the peak of which you know is approached by roads lined with motor courts, or the vein of California’s Highway 1. Maps are the only way we know our country is a country, a unified thing instead of a series of fields, forests and cities that go forever. In the United States, the map, whether it be a Conquistador sketch, a Rand McNally atlas or a foldout picked up at a Union 76 station, the sort you never fold the same way twice, is holy. ![]()
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