Mental Cartography

When I first moved to Seattle to start attending UW (14+ years ago, which is ridiculous, because I only lived in Eastern Washington for 12 years, and there’s simply no way I’ve lived here longer than I lived over there), I had only the most rudimentary understanding of the layout of the Puget Sound metro area, which was pretty much based around the I-90 corridor.  Okay, rudimentary is probably an understatement.  Tenuous?  Basic?  None of those really convey the sense of “really have no idea what is where” that I’m striving for here, but my vocabulary is failing me.

Anyways, I think it’s understandable, since I grew up in Eastern Washington, and really only came over here for Christmas, Mariners games and the occasional band trip.  Plus, I was never driving myself, and while I don’t have a problem learning how to get places from riding (although I understand this is a thing, poor unfortunate souls), this was infrequent enough that it never really sank in.  Plus, those were pretty short and focused trips, without a lot of exploring.  Makes it hard to learn an area, y’know?

I knew where the Kingdome (and later Safeco) was (because it’s right off the end of I-90), and that Snohomish and Arlington were north of Seattle (family), and I knew a few spot locations in Seattle (again, family), but not really how to get there, and that was really about it.  As I said, I’m lacking in words for just how pathetically sketchy my knowledge was.

Note that UW is not near any of these places.

Obviously, it started getting better once I moved here, although it took a while.  Driving up to 85^th seemed like going to a different town, let along going all the way across to Ballard.  In fairness, about the only time you get on the freeway in the Tri-Cities is when you actually ARE going to a different town.  Pasco’s the only one where you can really get to significantly different portions of town on a freeway with any sort of efficiency.  And I didn’t really spend much time in Pasco.

Northgate was even farther (especially when you make the mistake of taking the 75 instead of something like the 66 or 67…).  Since I didn’t have a car, I mostly learned bus routes, and a whole bunch of spot locations from band parties and the like, but I didn’t really have a sense of how they all fit together (and not because of any imbibing at the parties, I promise, Mom and Dad).  I’d have experiences where I’d take a new bus route that happened to go by several places that I knew, right in a row, and I’d had no idea that they were all so close together.

Even today, though, and despite my good sense of direction, I still have some gaping holes in my mental cartography of the Seattle metro area.  Actually, that’s not entirely the right way to put it.  Really, it’s that I have some severe misconceptions in my mental structure of the area, which remain despite multiple refutations.  This area is very different in my head than it is in the real world.

For example, in my head, Seattle ends at I-90 and the stadiums.  Sodo?  Columbia City?  Rainier Valley?  Heck, even West Seattle?  Not actually part of Seattle in my head.  What do they belong to?  Not really sure, but it’s not Seattle, I’m sure about that.  I just never (or really, really rarely) go down there (except on the freeway!), so in my head, they don’t count.

That’s not always true, though.  Capitol Hill and Magnolia, say, are both definitely part of Seattle to me, and I’ve rarely been to either of them, either.  What’s the difference?  Arbitrary geographic locations, apparently.  I’m not even sure where the southern line of Seattle is.  Somewhere around Boeing Field?

I’ve got most of North Seattle down, except that everything east of 35^th NE still confuses the heck out of me, because a lot of the street grid structure breaks down.  I will go miles out of my way all the way out to near Magnuson Park just to avoid the streets in the interior of that area.  I’m pretty sure cardinal directions break down in there.  Daedalus would have nightmares about it.  (My hobby: using more obscure portions of famous mythological stories.)  Maybe there’s a minotaur?

In my head, Bellevue is basically an area bounded by 4^th, 8^th, I-405, and Bellevue Way (plus the stuff on the west side of Bellevue Way, because Bell Square is definitely part of Bellevue).  Outside of that, Eastgate counts mostly because it’s on that I-90 corridor I mentioned earlier (although everything south of I-90, like Factoria, isn’t included).  Once you get off of Eastgate, though, or outside of that downtown core, it’s not Bellevue, it’s just, I don’t know, unincorporated forestland?  Oh, and exiting onto Bellevue Way from I-90 and 520 immediately takes you to the downtown core (which is therefore apparently simultaneously both four blocks and five miles wide).  (Sorry for butchering your town, friends from Bellevue.)

This is a perfect example of how these misconceptions persist despite the fact that I objectively know much, much better.  I’ve been to Bellevue High several times.  Taking my vanpool in for maintenance goes through Factoria.  I’ve run several errands up to the Crossroads area.  Every day, I leave work, drive down Eastgate, and then cut off on other roads through to SE 8^th.  I know that these places are all part of Bellevue, but I still don’t actually believe it.

It’s not just the Seattle area, though.  No matter how many times I look at a map, I remain unconvinced that Seattle and Spokane are at basically the same latitude, and that Wenatchee is south of them both.  That’s just not possible.  And Spokane really just consists of about a mile along the river from the dam to Gonzaga, right?

Even where I grew up, I still have trouble with certain geographic relationships.  I always know, intellectually, that my high school, Southridge, is further west than I always think it is.  There’s just a big hill between it and most of the rest of town that keeps you from being able to visually place it.  But I didn’t realize until just now, looking at a map, that it’s actually further west than Kamiakin!  (Not by a lot, but it’s true!)  That just cannot possibly be.  It’s just not physically possible.

I’m sure by now you’re expecting me to pivot to something meaningful about how facts can have a hard time overcoming preconceptions, but I’m going to mix things up and just leave this here on a light note.

And a question: What funny mental geography quirks do you have?