A World Without GPS

I said goodbye to my husband and watched him head to his airline as I headed back to my car. At 4:30 am, I was surprised to see how many cars were on the road and at the airport for a Saturday morning. I suppose most people at this hour were heading east. But even the Interstate was full of people hurrying into the darkness to an unknown place. I clipped my phone into its holder and turned on my GPS for HOME. Unlike other airports, Sky Harbor is known for several entrances and exits, and I wanted to ensure I was on the right path to my house.

As I made the loop to turn west, imagine my surprise when the GPS instructed me to take I-10 East! You know that moment when you have to make that split decision to follow the GPS or go the way you know? Well, I figured there must be a reason for the direction change, so I took the East direction. One thing I was sure of was that I knew which way was West because of the signal towers on the mountains outside of the city. If all else failed, I’d use them to get me home.

I suppose I wasn’t too different from the first Wild West explorers who used the sun and stars to guide them. I was using a physical navigational tool to calm my nerves while I listened to a machine tell me what to do. It wasn’t till later, after I had made it home safely on an interstate that turned me back West, that I found myself watching Aerial America on the Smithsonian Channel. The segment was about the explorers of Yellowstone (National Park) who, in the 1800s, set out to map the area for the government. Imagine what it must have been like not having GPS!

The narrator spoke of the photographer and artist who found themselves on an expedition into the wilds of Montana and WyominTheir detailed work, even to this day, is so unique that hikers today wouldn’t dare traverse where the original expedition (cartographers) roamed. They wandered the vast land, making maps of physical features like geysers, waterfalls, canyons, and range land. Imagine their surprise when they found themselves stuck at the base of a narrow ravine, having to retrace their tracks only to turn around and run into another dead end. Although the terrain was beautiful, it was tedious work. But the artwork and  photographs were like nothing anyone had ever seen before.

 

 

 

 

Imagine what the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition in 1870 would think today if they used a GPS. I mean, I had to use a GPS to get home, and I know where my house is located. It truly makes you think about our lives today and how we have so easily given ourselves up to the technology of Global Positioning Systems. How often do you turn on your Google Maps or Waze to find a store, city, or park? I bet the number is more than once a week. What would happen if you tried to find something on your own? Could you do it? Should you do it, or would you be lost forever?

I think for fun, we should all live a little and try turning off our GPS. For there’s a great big world out there to discover, and wouldn’t it be fun using our brain to discover something new around us?