Week 38: On the Map, a little sidetrip

 OK, now I'm a month behind but I may just start cheating a bit and move ahead with much shorter entries for a bit.  The pandemic is providing plenty of suspense to this election season (but I feel about politics on this page like Edna in The Incredibles felt about capes:  NO POLITICS).  It's been a bit distracting.  Some things in the pandemic look better, some look stubborn, but I'm living in hope that we will get this figured out.  Meanwhile, I'm making masks for family, friends, and as a small project on behalf of my Gold Star Mothers chapter.  It's a great way to use fabric I love that just won't go in a quilt.

So, this week's prompt is "On the Map."  In these days of Google Maps, we seem to hardly look any more at paper maps, but maps have not disappeared, oh no.  As a runner, I look at the map my Garmin watch generates every time I take a run, to see where I was fastest or slowest and to check the distances between the mental checkpoints I've picked.  When I travel, I check those virtual maps to see where I am in relation to my hotel or my destination, and when I use my phone to take pictures, I check the metadata to see where I am (especially fun from airplanes).  But here in my little town of La Conner, perched on the edge of a channel between two bays, there are large, laminated maps of Puget Sound (or the Salish Sea as it is slowly becoming) posted at either end of the town boardwalk.  These maps show where we are, the islands in the waterways in front of us and the cities and towns on the mainland.  Now, it has been a while since I personally studied these maps but visitors here often pause to place themselves:  if they came on roads they are sometimes surprised to see where they are in relation to the water, and if they came by boat they are surprised to see how far away from any big town they really are!

For myself, the view of Puget Sound reminds me that my mother's family settled in Washington state at the far south point of the water, in Olympia, certainly by the time my grandmother was born in 1895.  There've been hints of family settled a little farther afield too, and maybe if I find an older map, I'll be able to find McDuff Road in Tenino!

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