The North, South, East, and West Of It

How GPS has dumbed us down

I shouldn’t be surprised that no one seems to have a sense of direction except me. And I will accept my kudos.

It started when I was very young as a kid whose parents were divorced and lived hundreds of miles apart. There wasn’t a whole lot for a kid to do in the back seat of a car. There were books, but that made a lot of kids carsick. Toys? They can only occupy a bored kid for so long.

What does this have to do with directions? Read on…

Rocks

The madness started with my dad. He was a geologist and could point out the various landforms and features we passed by. Sometimes we’d stop and take a closer look. (In case you didn’t know, parents back then did not like to stop for anything, not even a screaming kid’s bladder. They had to “make time.” Geez, they weren’t truck drivers!)

We’d get into the nitty-gritty and look at rocks up close. I’d choose to take a few but always liked the nice shiny ones in the souvenir stores the best. To this day, when I go on road trips, I bring home rocks. They are cheap souvenirs that often wind up in my landscapes. Just yesterday, I went to the West Mesa to collect a few boulders.

“What do rocks have to do with directions?”, you might be saying.