ROAD MAPS ARE NOT FOR THE BIRDS
Rex Burress
With the anticipated coming of a new spring season, migratory birds that spent the winter with us in central California will take off for the north to the call of the wild. Unlike the human traveler, they are not burdened with road maps, GPS homing devices transferring signals from a satellite, or a car full of accessories.
From goose to gadwall to grebe, they all have what they need. Swallow, swift, shrike—birds have it right with all they need for flight!
Even though you can dial a map on Google these days, I recently reverted to one of my many paper maps to check a road near my hometown in Missouri. Remember paper maps? Remember the filling stations [gas] that once provided them free? I have hundreds of those old roadmaps, rather unnecessary if you have a computer now days, nevertheless, it's a joy to spread them out to let your eyes ponder over places and possibilities where you have been and where you might go.
Some of my maps are marked like a treasure map, with notations to the side indicating signs of discovery. I have a file full of rock hunter guides and find it delightful to just move my eyes over those road and river squiggles, recalling the adventures of any particular place. I remember Auburn Chinese- writing- rock and the giant rattlesnake, fossils on Sharkstooth Hill, petrified whale bone at Half-Moon Bay, colorful cliffs at Redrock Canyon, and stuck in the sand at Last Chance Canyon! Maps will connect you with the past and the present. Some of those old maps are historical treasures!
Laying out a map of the United States to plan a cross-country route is an absolutely absorbing activity. “The greatest joy of any pleasure is often the anticipation of it.” You work in tandem with a travel guide and note over-night stops; campgrounds if you're into that mode, or motels when those are called for. The map is the blueprint. World travel is even of a greater dimension, and I've never tried to use a road map, in, let's say, the French Alps, or, perish the thought, Russia.
One mountain pass over the Sierras that I used to cross with some apprehension is Sonora Pass. It is on highway 120 where we went to Camp Chinquapin near Pinecrest,CA for a couple summers, and once, when we were camping just over the 10,000-foot Sonora Pass summit in Leavitt Meadow, I found some hi-class jasper, that culminated in the discovery of a 11,000-foot gem field south of Sonora Pass. [Guided by a CA Gem Trail article with maps].
You would never know how steep the Sonora Pass summit road is from looking at the road map, but our Rambler station wagon got vapor locks on the ascent. Sister Millie's under-powered VW van had to be pushed over the top one time !
The review caused me to retrieve my 3-D relief model of CA, and the steepness of those canyons seems scary now that I'm grounded in lowland Oroville! Through my magnifier I see 11,000-foot Mt. Hoffman, the highest I've climbed, and the first mountain John Muir climbed in 1868. Mt. Whitney, the highest in the lower states at 14,496, looms up west of Lone Pine and Death Valley. These are things you can learn by perusing a map. The end result of map observation is navigation on our planet or a zoom to our imagination.
Think of Lewis and Clark and their roadless, mapless, 1804 expedition in western America that they mapped...and named a lot of landmarks, and you'll know man makes maps!
“You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going,
because you might not get there...When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” --Yogi Berra
“A good plan is like a road map: It shows the final destination and usually
the best way to get there.” --H. Stanley Judd