It feels like I've always loved maps: looking at them, figuring out how places are connected, planning trips, and with historical fiction, discovering more about how things used to be. One of my pleasures has been trying to re-draw maps of the two neighborhoods I lived in as a kid, seeing how many family names I could still place on the houses.
So I was very surprised to learn, some years ago, that maps are not intuitive -- someone has to sit with you and show you how they represent places and distances and relationships. Ever since then, I've tried to include them in school presentations, and once helped a kindergarten/first grade create a map of their town and the bus routes, on an old white sheet.
This map of my home town of Waterford is such a big reference item for me that I have it on the refrigerator, not on the front (where grandkid items and medical appointments may cluster) but on one side, all to itself. Even the smallest notes and family connections on it remind me of things I should make clear in my 1850s historical fiction. I depended on "old" maps of Peacham and Danville for THE BITTER AND THE SWEET. I needed to know the turns that Almyra would make with the horses, and what she'd see along the way.
In the past few months I've tried writing poems in clusters around themes, and MAPS became one of them. So I was tickled when Hole in the Head Review published this one. If the type here feels too small, look on their page at this link.
What kinds of things might you "map" about your life -- as a kid, or now?
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