Anyone who's spent time in a classic North American grid-style metropolis, such as New York or Toronto, understands this conundrum. Having disembarked from the subway, we emerge from underground, blinking in the shock of bright natural light, knowing which intersection we're at but not having a clue which way we want to go. We know where we are, but not where to go. I'm not typical (read my book....), but even after spending most of the first couple of decades of my life in Toronto, I had no end of trouble with this problem. Now, a pilot program in New York City proposes to place signs at street level, indicating the cardinal compass directions. But will it help? My wife, whose sense of direction usually surpasses my own, hates it when I give her directions based on compass points.
"Meet me on the north-west corner of King and Bridgeport," I might say.
"Is that on the same side as that Irish pub or the opposite side?" she'll respond.
My memory for landmarks is not good. Too often, I've got my head down, my mind in a remote space and time. She's upright, alert, in the moment.
We're all different. Recently, an old friend of mine visited Toronto with me. He's never lived there, nor ever spent more than a few hours there at a time. Each time we emerged at street level (usually from a watering hole rather than a subway station though), I'd have a vivid picture in my head of the where we were located on a lovely Mercator projection map of the city, but I'd have no idea which way to go to get to our next resting spot. I'd turn to Vince for help who, unerringly, could fling out an arm and point in the direction of Lake Ontario.
"How do you do that?" I asked. He, an old military man, replied:
"When you've been out in the desert for three days, you always know where the water is...."
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