Some Reasons Geography is Difficult

Many are Direction Challenged

I’ve often listened to poorly provided directions to someplace by a well meaning, but ill informed person; it’s excruciating. They don’t know the Cardinal directions; North, South, East, and West. Seven of ten people can’t point to East; where the sun comes up each morning. Sometimes they don’t even know left or right reliably. Many also are distance challenged with no idea of how far things are in feet, yards, or miles. They sometimes know relationships that are meaningful to them, but unknowable by you, like turn at the old house, or the dead tree, or the big stone, or a local business, or a used to be long gone business, or a place where some event occurred you couldn’t possibly have known. Sometimes it’s a reliable landmark, sometimes its not.

I have a few explanations why I think we have these problems.

1. First, I doubt it’s ever mentioned in school. Good understanding of distances, directions and relationship require logic and analytical thought. Most teachers can’t construct logical, succinct, meaningful instructions themselves. Never ask a teacher or a convenience market clerk for directions to anywhere.

2. Next, there are many misuses of the Cardinal direction relationships in common use.

Here are a couple of my nominees for most egregious abuses:

a. Referring to any location east of the Mississippi River as Mid-West. This happens nearly everyday on every TV or radio weather broadcast, and often in TV programming and newspaper stories. Simply take a look at the US map; Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee are not even in the west, let alone Mid-West. If anything they are Mid-East.

b. States like Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas New Mexico and Oklahoma are not even middle-west; they are more logically central states.

c. Any simple look at the map will show states like Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah are in the center of the west and therefore, logically Mid-West.

3. A similar problem exists in common use in California. The center of California is nearly always referred to as Northern California.

a. Again, a simple look at the proportions of the map will tell any logical person Northern California would be North of Central California, and Southern California is South of Central California. No one says San Francisco is in Western California, and most certainly not in nasty Central California with those primitive agricultural types and ignorant Oklahoma transplants that settled in the Central Valley in the 1940’s and made it into the most productive food producing region on our planet.

b. Northern California on the map clearly includes Redding, Alturas, Crescent City, Eureka, Chico, and doubtfully, Sacramento, Davis or Santa Rosa. Everything South of Sacramento to Bakersfield should be Central California. Everything South of Bakersfield should be Southern California.

c. No one, save me and a few other malcontents refer to Eastern California as those places east of the Sierra Nevada and north of the San Bernardino Mountains to the Nevada and Arizona borders that would rather not be considered part of the craziness associated with Southern California. Places like Mojave, Palmdale, Lancaster, Victorville, Barstow, Twentynine Palms, Ridgecrest, Bishop, and Needles, that could clearly be Eastern California.

4. The power of how people see themselves and their relationship to rest of the nation often modifies what seems to be a geographic reference. New Yorkers and those from the Northeast colonies see themselves as the most important; therefore, everything west of them is considered “the West” in some way. For those on along the West Coast, the Northeast and upper East Coast is “Back East.” “Down South” refers more to a state of mind and shared experiences than geography. “Up North” can be any state near or touching the Canadian border. The “Southwest” can be any state near or eating foods like those near the Mexican border. These pseudo geographic titles convey more about perception and attitude than precise geography and are mostly cultural generalities.

So, what should be done?

The map should be viewed and referred to in geographic reality. Because Hawaii and Alaska are not contiguous, I recommend Western most for Hawaii (10,932 sq. mi. pop. 1.3M esti08) and Northwestern most for Alaska (656,425 sq. mi. pop. 0.68M esti08).

For the contiguous states I suggest only these regional designations; West, Central, East, North-central, South-central, Northwest, Southwest, Northeast, and Southeast. No more references to something called mid-anything.

West, (total area 457,564 sq. mi., total population 45.8M esti08.)

California (163,707 sq. mi.), Oregon (98,386 sq. mi.), Nevada (110,567 sq mi.) and Utah (84,904 sq. mi.)

Northwest, (total area 301,923 sq. mi., total population 9M esti08.)

Washington (71,303 sq. mi.), Idaho (83,574 sq. mi.) and Montana (147,046 sq. mi.)

Southwest, (total area 235,599 sq. mi., total population 8.4M esti.08.)

Arizona (114,006 sq. mi.) and New Mexico (121,593 sq. mi.)

Central, (total area 718,157 sq. mi., total population 46.3M esti08.)

Wyoming (97,818 sq. mi.), Colorado (104,100 sq. mi.), Nebraska (77,358 sq. mi.), Kansas (82,282 sq. mi.), Missouri (69,709 sq. mi.), Oklahoma (69,903 sq. mi.), Arkansas (53,182 sq. mi.), Indiana (36,420 sq. mi.), Ohio (44,828 sq. mi.), Kentucky (40,411 sq. mi.) and Tennessee (42,146 sq. mi.)

North Central, (total area 511,273 sq. mi., total population 38.2M esti08.)

North Dakota (70,702 sq. mi.), South Dakota (77,121 sq. mi.), Minnesota (86,943 sq. mi.), Iowa (56,276 sq. mi.), Wisconsin (65,503 sq. mi.), Michigan (96,810 sq. mi.), and Illinois (57,918 sq. mi.)

South Central, (total area 268,601 sq. mi., total population 24.3M esti08.)

Texas (268,601 sq. mi.);

East, (total area 191,507 sq. mi., total population 47.5M esti08.)

Pennsylvania (46,058 sq. mi.), New Jersey (8,722 sq. mi.), Maryland (12,407 sq. mi.), Delaware (1,954 sq. mi.), Rhode Island (1,545 sq. mi.), Virginia (42,769 sq. mi.), West Virginia (24,231 sq. mi.), and North Carolina (53,821 sq. mi.)

Northeast, (total area 124,927 sq. mi., total population 32.7M esti08.)

Maine (35,387 sq. mi.), New Hampshire (9,351 sq. mi.), Vermont (9,615 sq. mi.), New York (54,475 sq. mi.), Massachusetts (10,555 sq. mi.), and Connecticut (5,544 sq. mi.)

Southeast, (total area 299,906 sq. mi., total population 44.5M esti08.)

Louisiana (51,843 sq. mi.), South Carolina (32,007 sq. mi.), Mississippi (38,434 sq. mi.), Alabama (52,423 sq. mi.), Georgia (59,441 sq. mi.), and Florida (65,758 sq. mi.)

Notes:
No conscious attempt was made to equalize the areas or populations of these regions.
Square Miles (sq. mi.) include waters of the State.
Estimates and calculations incompletely reviewed at posting.