A hidden bonus of Northern New England living is its ability to stymie GPS systems. Mother Earth has a way of reminding Silicon Valley programmers who is really in charge. As an example, last summer, on the way home from an area state park, where I had spent an afternoon with my two boys, I plugged in my home address and trusted technology. Although the route home deviated from the way I had come, I wasn’t worried. GPS is like a pipe cleaner: pliable, but always rigid in its ultimate purpose. In my case, its job was to get me home.
With one son sound asleep and the other peacefully perusing a book, the navigation system told me to take a right on a road that had “Cemetery” in its name. I pointed my sedan down the first 50 feet saying to myself, “This isn’t a road.” I stopped and looked at the screen, doubting its reliability.
An epic battle ensued. Eventually, my inner moron wrestled my inner very stable genius into submission. Gingerly, I pressed on the gas. I was on a rutted-out, narrow, muddy path through the woods. Hard-core 4X4 vehicles had laid the tracks, and it dawned on me that this was a cut-through for hunters or other recreational adventurers.
My sedan was way out of its league.
Three inches on the outside of my tires, ditches awaited, and with them, a humiliating call for help. I proceeded at 2 mph, harshly telling my oldest to “be quiet, I’m concentrating” when he asked where we were.
The screen, in the manner of a cocky teenager, told me I was doing great and would need to take a right in half a mile. Like a New England Patriots fanatic repeating “In Bill we trust,” I put all my faith in this onboard computer. Twenty sweaty minutes later, after a lot of concerns about ground clearance, mud depth and fallen branches, I emerged onto a legitimate dirt road.
As far as sedan driving goes, I felt pretty accomplished.
As far as being a man goes, I felt like the dumbest among us. (Although less dumb, perhaps, than the group of skiers from Connecticut whose SUV sank to the bottom of Lake Champlain last month after following their GPS onto the frozen surface of the lake.)
Since my silly escapade — and several others where the digital map shows a clear course but the physical road is nothing more than a footpath — I have been thinking about the limits of GPS. Before you call me a Luddite, I promise I use GPS all the time. It makes many previously hectic drives — getting out of New York or Boston, for starters — entirely manageable. Plus, when you go to someone’s house for the first time now, all you need is the address. Seriously, who asks for directions anymore? It’s the societal equivalent of using the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Nevertheless, I have noticed that there are times when I like leaving the GPS off. The Upper Valley is an especially fertile place to drive aimlessly and, as far as I know, you cannot program your GPS to “cruise back roads with nice views for the next hour.” I don’t need GPS to tell me to keep driving for a few extra minutes — even after it urgently insists that I “have arrived at my destination” — when a little man is snoring in the back seat.
More than that, though, I try to play a little defense against technology. I think we all do, though perhaps not consciously. The other day, I got into a conversation about where the old Landers restaurant used to be. The first guy I asked thought it was down near the furniture store, not far from John’s office. I thought it was down from the old Wilson Tire, near the new one, which is now where the car wash used to be. Neither of us used a street name to describe the location.
It’s fun to tell people that I live across the street from the house that blew up and watch them nod in recognition. When we go to the Skiway, my kids love looking for the Snoopy, which tells them that we’re almost there. We all describe places to other people in insider terms: “The left in Thetford after the road to Roney’s house,” or “start off like you’re going to the Gorge” or “coming from Campion, be careful right after the blinking yellow light on the hill down toward the cemetery; there’s always cops there,” or “I was passing that place where you almost hit a deer.”
Good luck entering “the old Landers restaurant” or “Snoopy near the Skiway” or “where you almost hit a deer” into your GPS.
Reflecting on these little verbal tricks we play — and they are tricks; we find new and different ways of describing the world around us, depending on our audience — it occurs to me that we are hardwired for these types of interactions. We all need ways to communicate with one another that no one else can understand. In a world where we assume omniscience to be a given, available to everyone with a reliable Wi-Fi connection, it can stabilize our senses to recognize that the technology in our skulls remains pretty powerful.
If you ever want to talk to me about these ideas in person, we could meet across the street from the house my wife lived when she was in college and walk to the place where I used to take driver’s ed, continuing uptown to where Eastman’s once was. There are benches near there, good for conversation and reflecting on the value of one driver, one navigator, and one good old fashioned map. See you there.
Mark Lilienthal lives in Norwich. He can be reached at mlilient@gmail.com.