A Feat

Yesterday, I accomplished something I'm a little proud of. I went to a client's house and from there to a part of town I'd never seen before (I didn't even know it was there, actually), found the place I was looking for, and then came home. I didn't follow a set route to get there or back, and I did all this without ever losing my sense of direction.

I will admit there were a couple rocky moments when I turned out of a neighborhood onto a street that was not perpendicular to the road I'd been driving on, but rather more like a 62° angle. All the other streets that branched off around me weren't aligned either. The people who constructed Iowa City didn't seem to know about the simple concept of a grid. But, despite these odds, I made it through.

Now, you might be thinking that I'm a little pathetic if I can't even venture into part of my own town without getting turned around, but let me defend myself by saying that I am struggling against the odds here. I grew up in the shadow of the Catalina Mountains. Off in the distance reared the Tucson Mountains, and the Tortolitas. When I moved to Flagstaff, the peaks were always hugely present outside my window, and on the four-hour drive between Tucson and Flagstaff, there was never a smooth horizon. Mountains were not just scenery for me, they were a fact of life.

In Iowa there are no mountains. None. There aren't even any overgrown hills. The landscape just rolls and rolls and things like trees and houses consistently block out the view of the low, low horizon.

Needless to say, as I grew up my sense of direction logically based itself on landmarks. When I first arrived here in Iowa, where there are no landmarks, I found myself instantly disoriented by, say, glancing quickly over my shoulder, or walking into a building and then walking out again a little later.

What I discovered during my little foray into the unknown realm of crooked streets and new parts of town - I've made some progress. (Although I will also note that yesterday my combined driving distance was less than six miles...)