Oh! Geography

I lived in Provo for the better part of 6 years, and have tracked an awful lot of running mileage here, so I once knew Provo like the back of my hand. But I've been away for five years, with only a few very short visits in the meantime, and I'm finding that, while the general layout still feels familiar, I'm having to relearn all the little details.

I honestly didn't expect it to be like this, because I have a good memory for places. I thought my mental map would snap into place the moment I first exited off the I-15 at University Parkway. Instead, my mental map has a few bold lines (University Ave., Freedom Blvd., Bulldog, 9th East), and then a whole lot of gray space in between. I have to wander into the gray in order for it to fill itself back in, and it only does so slowly. Although I have a general sense of where I'm going on my runs, the specifics only come to me a few blocks in advance. It's kind of like being a little militia icon in Civilization, where the terrain unveils itself as you move into it.

Like this morning when I ran past the temple up into the Indian Hills neighborhood. As I ran past Rock Canyon park, I thought, "Oh yeah, I remember this! The street will curve around, and there will be two cul-de-sacs* on my right." And then the road curved and there were the two little side streets, and I found myself at the bottom of a long, familiar hill that I had not remembered until I saw it. But I instantly remembered that at the top of the hill was a dead-end street with a little pedestrian walkway that would spit me out onto...Foothill Boulevard? A different street? I wouldn't know until I got there. This is a whole new kind of exploring.

Even the neighborhood I live in is only unfolding gradually. I live in the Tree Streets, so nicknamed because all the streets are named after trees, instead of being named after numbers like most streets in Utah. When I moved into my house late last week I was surprised to find that I could no longer remember the names and locations of all the streets. After a couple runs and a few walks around the neighborhood with Jin, it's come back to me. From west to east, there's Birch, Cherry, Locust, Maple, and Willow, and then from south to north you hit, in order, Apple, Aspen, Ash, Briar, Cedar, Elm, and Fir.

I didn't just list that for the sake of my own memory. There's a funny little quirk in the order of the tree streets, and it used to bug me just a little when I lived there five years ago. When I rediscovered the quirk this weekend, it still bugged me. Bonus points if you can catch it. More bonus points if it bugs you, too :).



* Culs-de-sac?