Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Separated at birth
These map shapes had a life of their own for me, divorced from their actual territories.
Staring at a map for too long was like repeating a word over and over until all meaning is
stripped away. Uruguay ceased to represent an actual nation for me; it was just
that shape,
that slightly lopsided teardrop. I saw these outlines even after the atlas was closed, after-
images floating in my mind's eye. The knotty pine paneling in my grandparents' upstairs
bedroom was full of loops and whorls that reminded me of faraway fjords and lagoons. A
puddleinaparkinglotwasLakeOkeechobeeortheBlackSea.ThefirsttimeIsawMikhail
Gorbachev on TV, I remember thinking immediately that his famous birthmark looked
just
like
a map of Thailand.
*
By the time I was ten, my beloved Hammond atlas was just one of a whole collection
of atlases on my bedroom bookshelf. My parents called them my “atli,” though even at the
time I was pretty sure that wasn't the right plural. Road atlases, historical atlases, pocket
atlases. IwishIcouldsaythatIsurveyedmymapswiththekeeneyeofascientist, looking
at watersheds and deforestation and population density and saying smart-sounding things
like “Aha, that must be a subduction zone.” But I don't think I was that kind of map fan. I
