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just empty because they were rugged and remote; they were empty because nobody really
wanted to live there. These were the places on the Earth that, well, sort of sucked. So I
never put my finger on the glaciers of Greenland and said, “I will go there!” like Conrad's
Marlow.ButIlikedthattheyexisted.Evenonamapthatshowedeverylittle Ajo,Arizona,
there was still some mystery left somewhere .
And then there were those amazing place-names. My hours with maps featured lots of
under-my-breath whispering: the names of African rivers (“Lualaba . . . Jumba . . . Lim-
popo . . . ”) and Andean peaks (“Aconcagua . . . Yerupajá . . . Llullaillaco . . . ”) and
Texas counties (“Glasscock . . . Comanche . . . Deaf Smith . . . ”) They were secret pass-
words to entry into other worlds—more magical, I'm sure, in many cases, than the places
themselves. My first atlas listed, in tiny columns of type under each map, the populations
for thousands of cities and towns, and I would pore over these lists looking for comically
underpopulated places like Scotsguard, Saskatchewan (population: 3), or Hibberts Gore,
Maine (population: 1). I dreamed of one day living in one of these glamorous spots—sure,
it would be lonely, but think of the level of celebrity! The lone resident of Hibberts Gore,
Maine, gets specifically mentioned in the world atlas ! Well, almost.
The shapes of places were just as transporting for me as their names. Their outlines
were full of personality: Alaska was a chubby profile smiling benevolently toward Siberia.
Maine was a boxing glove. Burma had a tail like a monkey. I admired roughly rectangular
territories like Turkey and Portugal and Puerto Rico, which seemed sturdy and respectable
to me, but not more precisely rectangular places like Colorado or Utah, whose geometric
perfection made them false, uneasy additions to the national map. I immediately noticed
whentwoareashadslightlysimilaroutlines—WisconsinandTanzania,LakeMichiganand
Sweden, the island of Lanai and South Carolina—and decided they must be geographic
soul mates of some kind. To this day, I see British Columbia on a map and think of it as
a more robust, muscular version of California, just as the Canadians there must be more
robust, muscular versions of Californians.
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