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Place is Not a Character—It is Its Own Story ‹ Literary Hub

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Early this summer, my partner and I attempted to find an alpine lake. For guidance, we had their cell phone with trail maps downloaded and my Garmin GPS navigator. On our maps, a small oval of blue rested not far from the backcountry site where we had pitched our tent, and a dashed line marked “primitive trail” led directly from our campsite to that blue oval. This dashed line corresponded to a narrow, overgrown path, which brought us to a soggy meadow. There, the trail on our map continued across a small blue line. The trail beneath our feet disappeared. We wandered toward the creek to our left, my GPS rewarding us by counting down the number of feet we had until we were on the trail. If I stood on the bank of the creek, I was directly on the trail. I’d found it. It wasn’t there. The trail on my map crossed the creek, so we crossed the creek, shimmying along a fallen log into dense, young forest. We followed the map’s line up a ridge and paused at the edge of a small cliff. The line o

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