Maps Don't Lie (People Do)

When California was an Island, & 'Girl Talk' Oceanography— A Day at the Osher Map Library

I love maps. I have hundreds of roadmaps stuffed in a dusty cardboard box which I’ll never throw away. My partner is the same— I think Jon wants to be buried with his little red book, the Plan de Paris.

I love unearthing our family map collection, revisiting the notes we scrawled in the margins, the food we spilled in their folds.

I remember my dad, who in his 40s was able to drive without a map, to any street in sprawling Los Angeles. There’s NO city grid.

When I asked, “How do you do it?”— he said, “I memorized The Thomas Guide.”

I aim for that kind of commitment.

In that spirit, you can imagine my glee when my friend and audio producer Jessica Lockhart invited me to visit the Osher Map Library at the University of Southern Maine. We spent a full day map-digging.

Osher has one of the greatest map collections in the world: historical, topographic, global— even imaginary worlds.

The viewing rooms are modest, but the collection is vast. Big tables and personal attention. I spoke to the…