Where in the World is Lisa Manterfield?

The British are obsessed with maps. My mother has a cupboard full of well-worn Ordnance Survey maps of Britain’s premier hiking spots and my brothers can debate for days about the relative merits of various routes from one side of town to the other. I myself have a shelf full of maps. I have Tanzania, Ireland, Hong Kong—all places I’ve considered visiting, but never actually been. A guidebook means nothing if you can’t see that the ocean is to the west and the ruins you want to visit are 40 miles to the northeast. In my opinion, you don’t get a true feel for a city until you see it laid out to scale.

When I first came to Los Angeles, my luggage arrived safely, but my sense of direction was held up in Immigration. Everywhere I turned there was gray concrete, honking cars and vast freeways spanning lane after speeding lane. It took some time to find my bearings and learn how to navigate my way around this vast metropolis.
“Get yourself a Thomas Brothers’,” someone advised.
“A what?”
“It’s a map book.”
“Lovely.” Or should I say, “Cool.”

Well, off I trotted to find this oracle of urban travel, but at four times my hourly pay rate, it hardly seemed worth it. A generous colleague stepped in and gave me his outdated edition: a pale blue ’85 and I happily explored the farthest edges of the giant fold-out map.

Then the age of the Internet came and Mapquest and Yahoo Maps became my new travel aids. They offered turn-by-turn directions, a choice of shortest or fastest routes, routes avoiding highways or elementary schools, even routes with maximum hot beverage outlets. Okay, maybe that was just my fantasy, but these electronic co-pilots were quick and simple to use and if the corners of my directions got battered or I spilled my Earl Grey on them, I simply printed another. So when my old Thomas Brothers’ got lost in a move, I didn’t bother to replace it and I never really missed it.

Then one day last June, I went to Irvine. Not by choice, of course. As a South Bay dweller, any trip involving a freeway requires a wilderness survival kit and a packed lunch. But, my job required it, so I tapped into Mapquest and printed my directions: 405 south, go 37.4 miles, exit. I didn’t really need such simple directions, but I took them just in case.
As I’d traveled so far south--beyond the Orange Curtain--I thought I might as well make an afternoon of it, so I took a side-trip. However, my usually keen sense of direction went awry. There seemed to be identical grand Mediterranean-style houses whichever way I turned; the parks, unfenced, with their carved wooden name signs and baseball diamonds had apparently been manufactured by the same company and shipped, ready-assembled to each neighborhood. Every corner looked the same to me and my beloved Pacific Ocean, trustily used for westward orientation, was nowhere to be seen.

I was lost.

I plucked up the tea-stained directions from the floor of my car and squinted at the postage stamp-sized “End” map, but the names of the streets flying by matched nothing I could see on the paper.

I was really lost.

The kindness of strangers never ceases to amaze me. Even in these hurried times of self-absorption and appalling manners, it still exists. At a gas station, a lovely gentleman with a heavy accent pointed me in the right direction and I reached my destination unscathed. The next day, I drove to my local bookstore--without the aid of Mapquest--and laid down my $34.95, thankfully no longer a half-day’s pay. The 2005 Thomas Guide, with its ultra-modern color scheme even came with a CD-Rom--something I had no intention of using.

It takes me longer to plan my trips these days, but that’s half the fun. There are pages to flip back and forth to and route options to decide upon. I may have to memorize a series of turns and maneuvers, and there are no clearly written directions to follow, but I have an advantage over a clinical, logical algorithm; I have creativity and insight. I know that the light at Westwood only ever lets three cars through, so should not be considered if arrival time is an issue. And I know that Santa Monica Boulevard is under construction and should be avoided at all costs. I also know that when I get a whim to go home from The Valley via the mountain roads, there will be green patches, brown squiggles and blue expanses aplenty. It may be neither the shortest nor the fastest route, but with the windows rolled down and the sun setting ahead of us, for the Brothers Thomas and me, it’s nirvana.