Atlas of Dream Locations

 Last night I woke in the middle of the night having dreamed I was in Canada, or rather taking a road trip to Canada with a group of other people. I was in charge of driving. Possibly this was because of the election coverage last night, although I don't care about the elections.

In the dark I reflected I have often had these road trip dreams during my life, and in case I tend to experience the dream both in terms of the on-the-ground scenario but also a map, or atlas that I can see, and the reality moves between one or the other level.

From my boyhood, I was fascinated by maps and atlases. They are so much a part of my identity that I could not write the story of my life without making them a central theme. The challenge of geography---being separated from a place I want to be, and people I want to be with, is a recurring theme in my life. 

In the dream last night, the part of Canada in which we were going---for a conference, or some kind of event---was in an area of the middle of Canada where I have never been. The roads and towns on the map conformed to my dream wishes of a place I have never been. Once the entire country was like this to me---a place of strange unknowns. Over the course of my life I made those places known to me. I did this because I loved America and wanted to embrace all of it. I wanted to be more than a citizen of a particular locale. I thought it was my duty, my destiny, to be American in every sense. In 2013 I finally completed visited all fifty states, the last one being fittingly Hawaii. But with that completion came a loss of that sense of the fantastic unknown. I have not been to all the provinces of Canada, and so maybe that I why I can still dream of parts of it in the old way. In that way the dream made me happy.

Of course paper maps and atlases are now outdated. They sit alongside postcards on the lists of "things that used to be common but are disappearing." With them goes a core part of my identity, my purpose for existing. I was the keeper of location knowledge, the navigator. It is not just maps that belong in a museum, but me.