Navigating the World: Reflections on Paper Maps vs Online Maps

I just did a fair amount of reflecting on a deeper topic: the difference between nostalgia and genuinely remembering the things in our past that were better. It eventually devolved into thoughts about paper maps. It’s interesting as a topic because there are plenty of people who never had to learn paper maps, so they are useless; little more than something to hang on a wall because they look cool.

But for those who only had paper maps, it can be easy to remember the huge amount of information they could pack into a small piece of colored paper. If you learned paper maps you probably also watched the evolution of electronic devices, so you remember using MapQuest on your desktop computer and printing out directions. You remember GPS’s that were stand-alone units, designed for sailors and outdoorsmen, with nothing approaching turn-by-turn navigation.

When I look at the totality of my experiences in trying to find my way around the world, I don’t see nostalgia for a simpler time so much as I see the trade-offs between two technologies. My cell phone can track my rides so I can look back at stops, side-trips, altitude and speed, and it can even create little movies of an arrow moving along a 3D satellite image of the terrain, simulating my route.

It can find gas stops and compare prices, it can find restaurants and filter them by type of cuisine, it can warn me of road construction and speed traps. Zooming in will give me detailed names of every footpath and alleyway, not just highways. Hell, if I have a cell signal I can look at a street view and find the exact road sign I need to look for or decide what lane I should be in before I ever get near an interchange.

The only thing online maps really lack is scale. Yes, the batteries never die on a paper map, but they get soaked by rain, smudged by coffee stains, or dog-earned and faded by time. The become out of date, fail to show certain details, and they only show secondary roads as gray lines, usually without a name or number. You can overcome these things with skill and experience, but it’s more than the satisfaction of figuring out a map’s puzzle that makes them rewarding.

Going back to scale, when you try to route yourself with an online map, every time you zoom in and out it reloads different details. You can spend hours looking at little side roads and awesome diversions, only to zoom out and realize you’ve only been looking at a few miles of a 400 mile trip. You can jump from one landmark to the next and suddenly realize you have wandered way off course, looking at areas you would need a lengthy detour to visit.

With a paper map you have a rather simple job, because the details of the job are tough. You have to link point A and point B, but you need to know where you are at each stage of the trip. In the real world, road signs won’t say “point B” but will tell you the next three towns you will hit and how far away they are. By knowing their names you know where you are on your route.

When those town names disappear you can assume you missed a junction, and must immediately start searching to make sure you are on the correct route still. This leaves you more fully engaged with the land around you. You’ll remember the names of towns and counties, creeks and business bypasses, state parks and county roads with ridiculous names like “Farm to Market Route 1237.”

With your phone guiding you it’s just “in 143 miles, keep straight.” You are free to distract yourself from the very thing you are doing. Moreover, it has changed us as a people. We used to have to ask the gas station attendant which way to Parkerville or — before my time — “is the road to Parkerville passable right now?”

And that’s exactly why I know my love of paper maps isn’t nostalgia. Before you could turn on AM radio and here road conditions, you stopped at a public house, a sheriffs department, or a chamber of commerce, and asked. Failing in that, the local feed store or gas station would have some local who came in from that side of town and can tell you if they saw any traffic passing from the other direction.

We can’t truly understand how we are in the wilderness when we are between towns, because even people who drove our roads in the 1930’s can’t imagine the two-track wagon lines that were called roads in the 1850’s, let alone the broken paths that pioneers had to string together while crossing the US. I mean, there’s a reason the Pony Express seemed romantic in the 1950’s: they looked at it the way we look at our roads before the interstate system was installed.

Back then people painted phone poles with a color combination so you knew you were on the correct route. That was it. Miss a marker? Well, get ready to sleep on the prairie. But I don’t mean to digress. I’m talking about paper maps and online maps. The difference there is truly in the way you zoom.

But there is more to it of course. If you navigate with only paper maps, you must closely follow each sign that approaches, and pay double-good attention in towns, as you can easily be on route 421,435,227, and 404 all at the same time. You need to know where you are and where you’re going, because some of those junctions hit you while you’re in a crowded little downtown, with local traffic unconcerned with routes at all.

They’ve no time for your sudden lane changes or driving below the speed limit to read all the road signs… you’re a tourist in the way, nothing more. But much like a person following a string or trail of breadcrumbs, if you lose the last marker you become instantly lost. There’s no cell phone to beep and say “rerouting” to let you know you missed a turn, and if you can’t get back to the route that was your trail of breadcrumbs, you will have to find someone to give you directions.

In another time, long, long ago, gas station attendants could help with that. They might even unfold a map and show you, instead of trying to sell you a map. But back then of course, there wasn’t a stream of people coming in and out, buying myriad items and expecting to be able to pay with their card and not speak a word to anyone.

Our technology changes us on the whole, yes… but there is plenty of good in remembering the “old ways.” Using a paper map isn’t like a rain dance my people did generations ago, but it is similar in that it’s a signal. When you are sitting in a diner looking at an online map, you are just another schleb staring at their phone.

If you sit at the same diner with a paper map spread out, you are sending an invitation. Some will simply be interested because they remember paper maps like a hazy dream from their childhood. Others will want to know where you are trying to get to and where you’ve come from.

I once pulled off in a remote traffic circle in France and needed to spread a paper map out, so I climbed out of the rental car so I could lay the map on the trunk. The very first car that came through stopped. And old man got out and asked something in French. “Umm, English?” I asked? “Yes, I speak English,” he replied, a bit stoically.

Soon he told me where I was and was going, told me about a coffee shop and cafe to try, and explained the town of Caen is pronounced “Coghn” and not “kay-ehn.” I remember that moment 20 years in the future, where if I were on my phone I never would have even stopped; my phone would have just told me where to go and where to turn.

How would any of us know what we are robbed from by staring at our phones? We are literally querying it for information and it is returning millions of ideas in milliseconds, in increasingly precise responses. That’s why I know I’m not nostalgic for paper maps. I see the advantages of having a cell phone, and constantly avail myself of the miracle that is a data plan.

I also remember to spread a map out on the well-worn counter of a diner, grab a magnifying glass or some reading glasses, pull out a pen, and say out loud, “now, where are we?”

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