Geography is often diminished to lines on maps and assorted place names. But Marilyn Englander has found that it's our own personal geography that sticks with us.
I taught geography to teenagers for many years. What a challenge to explain that Scandinavia dangles north of Europe but Greece sticks out below, the Balkans aren’t the Baltic, not to mention sorting Asian “stan” countries – Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, etc. And for California kids, helping them pinpoint foreign East Coast cities – Boston, Washington, Atlanta.
In an introductory project, I asked students to draw maps of the school neighborhood to help them see how the lay of the land related to north/south, comparative distances and so on. What they turned in were 28 idiosyncratic wonderlands. No two kids saw the geography the same way. Lacking street names or compass roses, the maps were labeled with memories – the blackberry patch, my bike crash, Jana’s house.
I’d drawn a map too, my own stories littering the landscape. Like my students, wherever I am, some old memory orients me on a personal map.
This is true for most of us, I’ve observed. We picture the world in 3D, not as flat maps. Listen to people giving directions: “Go down to where Miller’s Market used to be and cross that spot that always floods, then turn left where that house burned down.”
Geography can jog deep memory. On a drive to Tahoe, I was carried back through decades --- where we got stuck in a snowstorm, the place we took our kids on their first backpack, where Anika got married. In this way, the landscape becomes ours, anchoring us both temporally and physically.
I could draw a rough map of La Paz, Bolivia where I volunteered as a teenager, or where we swam every summer with Grandpa, or the bike paths through Santa Barbara. My personal experiences have etched the geography into my brain.
But understanding the map of Africa, or even remote parts of California is much harder. There’s a good argument for more travel: I need to brush up on geography.
With a Perspective, this is Marilyn Englander.
Marilyn Englander is a North Bay educator.