I make maps of natural surface, single track trails, basically mountain biking / hiking trails, for a local volunteer group. The workflow is typically mapping things electronically into OpenStreetMap, then exporting data from there and making print maps in two versions: one with "you are here" stuff for trailheads/intersections and the other for general use/reference.
Typically these trails have marker posts at major intersections with a number on them, often an indicator pointing the way to the next number, and a colored arrow indicating the loop they are on.
After I started doing this, and watching people reading the maps at the trailhead, I was amazed that user split into two stark camps: those who can read maps and those who can't. For those who could, the maps are exactly what they need, be them print or on some OSM app or whatnot.
For those that couldn't... They would get amazingly lost quickly, even when the trails are sight-distance, no more than 100' or so, apart. I've helped folks who, as example, I show that the post has a #2 on the top, I show them the direction to #3 and that they can follow the "yellow" arrows, and they just freeze. And then sometimes ask if there's an app that will tell them which way to turn.
I grew up looking at maps, using them with signage and such for navigation as I learned to drive, and I never realized just how much I took this skill for granted until I encountered other adults who simply can't.
Anyone who rides an MTB and wants to get better at reading maps, I can only recommend finding a local MTB-O group and joining them for training sessions. It helps if the area the map covers you are familiar with at least a little bit, after the session your familiarity will increase 200% (and I've been going to these MTB-O trainings for years, mainly to the same places, and still discover new trails and unknown areas!).
The basic idea of MTB-O is that you need to find points from a known starting position on a blind map. Rules are simple: you must follow existing trails, you shouldn't just cross terrain (like you would in the classic running version of orienteering). After a few sessions you will start understanding the importance of isohypses (elevation lines), because there can be significant differences in difficulty of routes, depending on your route choice. You decide your own route, then navigate, easier said than done while your heartrate is >170bpm :)
You start at the triangle, then usually go in sequence of the numbering of purple circles. Black lines are the trails, dotted means worse quality / smaller, straight line means wider, brown is paved / street.
Try connecting two purple circles purely by following the black trails, there are usually multiple reasonable options, but be vary of the difference in elevation! It is really fun doing it purely in your head, even better if you know the terrain, you can close your eyes and do an imaginery run!
My wife is definitely in the cannot read a map group. It astounds me and I've given up all hope of teaching her how to read a map. Even with GPS maps in the car it's still iffy.
I know there is a stereotype about females and spatial awareness, maybe that has something to do with it but I like to think it was all my time playing video games as a kid, which often had a map in the HUD or whatnot.
I think it's just cultural exposure rather than any sort of brain difference when it comes to map reading.
As a young lad, I did lots of map and compass work in boy scouts, and then more doing backpacking with my male friends. When I started hunting with those same buddies, map reading ability was assumed and absolutely essential for survival. A typical excursion is miles from a road or trail in heavily forested mountains. For some reason, I found my female friends mostly chose other forms of mutual recreation in their youth. I knew a few though that didn't and they were just as good as my male friends.
And now as a Civil Engineer, I often make maps for sites in GPS-difficult areas (heavy tree cover). So I've gotten REALLY good at piecing things together from tiny little details in satellite photography. Like nothing replaces seeing aerial shots over and over again and comparing it to what youve seen on the ground.
The single biggest skill that GPS is killing isn't symbolic recognition in the map, it's what I call "thinking big". GPS directions are the minutia, and if you follow directions at that scale, its VERY easy to become disoriented or lost. In contrast, if you just quickly scan the larger map features (position of a big mountain, the freeway, a large park boundary, etc, you can mostly navigate without the GPS at all. I might take different streets to get to the freeway, but I'll still get there.
In open country, you can't look at the trees or trail markers as your primary guide. You'll be in danger of getting lost. The skill is rather knowing which mountain you're on, where it is relative to other mountains, and counting the large scale features like ridges, valleys/streams, and general position of roads. I don't need turn by turn directions to get to the road due south of my position and then know I can follow it back up to the truck.
> GPS directions are the minutia, and if you follow directions at that scale, its VERY easy to become disoriented or lost. In contrast, if you just quickly scan the larger map features (position of a big mountain, the freeway, a large park boundary, etc, you can mostly navigate without the GPS at all.
Yes I find that even driving, if I follow Apple or Google maps navigation I'll realize that I have no clear idea how to get back to where I started. Back in the days when I'd have to look at a paper street map and plot my own course in advance, I'd have a much better sense of where I was and how to backtrack.
> GPS directions are the minutia, and if you follow directions at that scale, its VERY easy to become disoriented or lost.
I can't bring myself to use turn by turn directions unless I can look at the overview map first. The turn by turn is useful to me to find an unfamiliar freeway exit or a turn onto a street with terrible signage. But I need to see the overall map first to prime it in my head.
I get really frustrated at online maps that don't show street names (and one-ways) at medium levels of detail. Or they'll put the street label just outside the viewport.
> I think it's just cultural exposure rather than any sort of brain difference when it comes to map reading.
I'm not convinced of this. My oldest could read a map before kindergarten. He could navigate IKEA or the zoo. My middle child is hopeless even as she heads to college. We joke about sending the (much) younger brother with her so she doesn't get lost. It's only half a joke.
I've also had my time in the military (pre-GPS) watching a wide range of people fail spectacularly at land navigation. While the very poorly educated often did poorly and had little ability to abstract, the same bad navigation skills were on display with academy graduates who presumably already had more training before I ever saw them in the field.
There is definitely something innate to reading and navigating by map in my experience.
> The single biggest skill that GPS is killing isn't symbolic recognition in the map, it's what I call "thinking big".
I agree completely. If I'm using GPS to navigate around a town, I've found looking at the route first and creating a general narrative helps. Something like "I'm traveling generally southwest. Most of my time is on I-80, and my exit is shortly after the big turn after which I'll continue west."
Yeah, even though I grew up looking at maps and even drawing them for fun on graph paper when I was a kid, it has taken me a very long time to get to the point where I can navigate by map instead of step by step directions.
Living in the Boston area for a few years in my 20s before GPS nav was readily available definitely helped, as one wrong turn might easily wind up with you being somewhere you've never been before, and the only way back is to look at a map. I had a few very dog eared pages of the same atlas that a lot of people used back then.
I've spent a lot of time on the bike and skis looking at maps in Trailforks over the last few years. That has helped as well. It's fun to spend a lot of time in the woods and start to build a sense of ___location based on your surroundings.
When it gets really fun is when Trailforks is wrong...
I'm trying to get that fixed with a State Rec Area in northern Michigan. Trailforks was drawn, years ago, with the old/unofficial/local names of a bunch of bandit trails. Since then the state has closed a couple trails, officially recognized others, names have become standardized, and an official map has been developed.
Now Trailforks doesn't match the official map nor the on-the-ground signage. But the level of change needed is beyond what a normal user can do, and I'm struggling to get an admin to make the changes. In the mean time, when I was there a couple weeks ago I helped three separate groups that were profoundly lost because they thought they were in one place (per Trailforks) but none of the signage matched what they thought. It was the whole bad-data-is-worse-than-no-data problem.
If you want to see this for yourself, compare these two:
I use OsmAnd myself, and my main recommendation for folks is to use Gaia because it's... easier and less nerd knobby. But where OSM falls short is in tagging of mountain bike trails. Missing tags, no visualizers for contextual data like difficulty or route coloring on trail. Not to mention directionality on one-way trails, recommended (but not required) directions, the desire for showing routes on non-loop systems... etc.
Personally when navigating I use a combination of OsmAnd, TrailForks (carefully), and some sort of copy of the trail system's print map. This usually does me well.
I'm also working on a structure like this, which I hope to eventually use as an easy way to take OSM MTB trail data and present it on a slippy map, but it's still very much a casual side project / WIP: https://trailmaps.app/ramba
I have a feeling that the split is primarily between those who intuitively comprehend the maps along with those who were able to learn how to understand them against those who have never had any instructions alongside those who are utterly incapable of comprehending the maps even if given one on one instruction for a month straight....
We too often underestimate the stupidity of the common person....
I haven't read a map in decades now and think about this.
But it's not like the original skill was hard to acquire, in the absence of GPS I think most people could pick up map reading in a few days.
What is gone that I can't imagine coming back soon is the non-map direction giving people used to provide. Wonder how many people on HN are old enough to remember the endless debate between "street direction" people (e.g. just turn left on to Main St, then right on Douglas) vs the "Landmark direction" people (e.g. turn left just before the McDonald's after the Exxon gas station).
I got lost in my own 'neighborhood' (farmland area) because the burned out husk of a barn I used as a landmark for my turn was removed while I was away at school. County road numbers/addresses are not very memorable or easy to read at speed and everyone I knew for my whole life used landmarks until I moved into town.
I'm very reliant on a bunch of personally named gmaps pins now.
I have this all the time in the US... I'm a landmark direction person, and giving directions I see the route in my head. I can't get used to street counting or compass point directions... I think a lot has to do with what the street layouts were like when you were growing up. In England there is pretty much no street counting because all the streets are higgledy-piggledy.
I dropped my 16 year old son off at the commuter rail station last summer, as he was going to go into Boston and go bowling with his friends. When I got home, I noticed his phone had fallen out of his pocket and was sitting in the passenger seat. I drove back to the train station but he had already gotten on his train. When he got home that evening, it was quite interesting hearing how he had to come up with new solutions to navigate the city and find his friends at the bowling alley, as this was a skill he had never learned or needed with his phone handy. He was quite surprised at the inability and/or unwillingness of people he asked to give him any direction. He did manage to get hold of a tourist map from a Mormon street preacher, which helped after he figured out how to read it, but only listed major streets and so only got him sort of close. He finally managed to get somebody to look the address up on Google maps and he drew in the smaller streets on his paper map.
A simple life hack is to keep your GPS in "North Up" mode. You can follow directions while still maintaining spatial awareness. I started doing this many years ago after a particularly egregious routing error sent me an hour in the wrong direction.
I want to like North Up, but it's not very functional with a phone screen. If you're going north or south, you can see what's coming up, but east or west and you have no ability to be visually ahead of where you are. Google Maps is already fighting against me by zooming in way too close, but it's worth in North Up.
North up can be usable on my cars with GPS, but outdated maps and difficulty of making changes while in motion mean those aren't used.
I had never considered having my GPS any other way until my manager who was visiting from out of town said he thought I was mad.
I've given it some thought since then. If I'm traveling through some place for the first time, current-direction-up makes some sense. Especially at night or when it is hazy. I just depend on the directions being correct, and zoom back out to make sure I'm going the right direction.
If I'm travelling in some city like Phoenix which is laid out on a grid, north-up makes sense any time of day.
Generally I have a reference in mind: "destination is north and east of me, this side of the river, and this side of the interstate -- don't cross those".
I wish Apple Maps had a North Up mode. Unfortunately it doesn't and I had to abandon Google Maps because they made some algorithm changes that make it do dumb things like try to take you up a blocked private road and generally avoids the simpler routes in favor of a more "efficient" one.
Back when I used google maps, I especially hated its insistence on making unprotected left turns. If I knew the area it was taking me to, I would scan ahead for those and try to avoid them, but there were some terrifying times where I pulled up to a busy 5 or 6 lane stroad expected to turn left. I invariably turned right and took an alternate path, for the safety and comfort of everyone (except my map, which would scramble to figure out why I had done something so stupid).
I do this too. My phone will often tell me (or it will be clear from the surroundings) that the position marker is inaccurate, but it is harder to tell if the direction marker is accurate or not, so I just use the map for this.
That presumes there was spatial awareness in the first place. Most people don't understand directions (as in cardinal and relative) nor can relate their current position to the map. Hell, the reason most of them ain't lost and got eaten by wolves is just because they live in the cities, there are no wolves and eventually someone can point them to the right direction.
Also, every time people use 'GPS' instead of a 'navigation system' I mentally facepalm again. Thanks, America. Now I need to get in my 'Nissan' Ford to drive to 'Target' Walmart.
GPS does exist, sure, but I still often see tourists in my city look at a paper map. While standing in the middle of a busy sidewalk. People still ask for directions too, especially the older ones who are less likely to have or use a smartphone and/or mobile data.
GPS directions tend to be much more difficult for pedestrians than for drivers because the direction you're pointed is either undefined or hard to ascertain. That's when asking someone "which way is X" is necessary.
When I was a kid, we lived in an area the rebels were known to visit. I didn't spend much time outside our family compound or the school grounds and the area in between was pretty safe. But my mom made sure we had small maps with us at all times and knew how to read them. Areas to avoid like the edge of town were well marked.
I've always loved maps. There may be survivorship bias here. Had I hated maps as a child, would I have been less careful where I roamed? Probably not, but I can't say for sure.
Later on I discovered The Hobbit, which had maps of middle earth (The Hobbit had maps, right? I'm not thinking of LoTR, am I?) When we returned to the states, we always had USGS sectional maps around the house. I spent some time in scouting, mostly cause I really enjoyed camping and orienteering. I bemoan the loss of orienteering w/ paper maps and dead reckoning angles and whatnot.
In the military I would guess I was in at least the top 15% of the class on map reading and spacial reasoning. After 18 years of dealing with maps, it's no surprise. There were SO MANY people who literally could not read a map to save their lives. I have uttered the sentence "No Sir, If you travel town that road you will encounter land mines, as indicated on this map." -- The key here is if you're going to contradict your chain of command, do it respectfully.
I think I may use Google Maps differently than most people. I'll look at the map to figure out where I'm going and what the major streets are and then just start driving. Looking at the map application constantly seems to get in the way of forming spacial memories. Though I really only do this in my home town. Turn by turn is quite useful if you're in a place you've never been to and probably won't return to.
But it's kind of funny... I took a 15 second gander at my child's college campus map and was able to navigate him to places he's never been to (on his own campus.) I probably should have given him a map and compass when he was a kid.
I'd say map reading isn't gone yet, but figuring out where the heck you are on the map is (and good riddance). Back before GPS, when thoroughly lost, you had to take the next intersection and find it in the road/coordinate reference listing that was hopefully on the back of the map. Often while the driver (divided responsibility: Driver and Navigator) kept driving. Also counting off distance to a possibly unmarked turn and so on.
I still read maps. Google Maps having become increasingly bloated and user hostile on Android, frequently I just pull up the OSM-based map that the Strava app displays. So handy for planning your next move when cycling in an unfamiliar area.
Is this "losing the capability" real or just a piece of nostalgia? Young people won't know how to use a rotary phone, is this something to miss today? Is this something to not be able to learn if needed?
Otherwise when you say "navigator" I remember back in the day I was handling the city map exactly like Google Maps reorients it when you take turns, and figuring out the correct lanes by comparing the next-next map turn with the lane signs... not an easy task but fun.
I think map reading is more useful than handling a specific form of a specific technology. It's hard to imagine a situation where a rotary phone would ever be useful - they don't work on their own, but require infrastructure as well. A map however is more or less timeless and can be used even if you end up somewhere with nothing else.
Point taken, the metaphor was not very appropriate (but again which metaphor is). Again to the argument: is it worth complaining people have lost the practice (I won't say "ability") of reading maps, an obsolete (as of today!) form of orientation? Did anything atrophy making them unable to (re)learn it when needed again? Because it's not like anyone was born with map-reading skills, or had a special gene for it, so I'd say whenever we'll need paper maps again we will handle it again just as well.
While the article describes maps in an artistic way, there is also one practical aspect where they still excel over GPS. It's that GPS is almost always being used in turn-by-turn mode where it translates the map into words. But words can be imprecise.
I recently had to follow a route that involved two right turns very close to each other. The second turn was inconspicuously signed and there were other roads intersecting in the same vicinity. The worded directions didn't accurately translate into a visual concept of how close the roads were and the angles at which they intersected.
The layout of that intersection, and how easy it was to miss the turn, became obvious after I stopped and looked at the map. If I had seen that before driving I would have been able to anticipate the turns. A person giving directions to another person would likely use hand gestures to draw a picture of how the roads intersect. Describing it with words alone doesn't quite do the job. But that's all a GPS can do. Even if you were to look at the map on the screen, because it highlights the intended route and fades other streets into the background, you'd still probably not notice how close the correct and incorrect streets were.
Perhaps someone could program an orienteering mode for GPS where it gives directions in precise distances and bearings. Paired with a snappy drill instructor voice.
New York City is easy to navigate without a ~GPS~ map. It has a fairly logical layout, and I can generally figure out where I'm going. Philadelphia, on the other hand, was not easy to navigate at all.
NYC's streets are mostly numbered. If something is given a name, it's usually a bigger avenue. The narrower blocks are numbered and it's easy to tell if you've gone in the wrong direction because the numbers are going in the wrong direction. Since the block is short, you don't have to walk far before realizing this. Paths in one direction are avenues, the other direction are streets, so it's easy to get your bearings.
Philadelphia's streets are mostly named, and it's almost impossible to tell if you're walking in the right direction without walking a decent distance. East/West paths are sometimes avenues, but not always.
(1) You need to memorize the order of the streets (... Vine, Race, Arch, Market, Chestnut, Walnut, Locust, Spruce, Pine, ...), which is mildly annoying but you just have to do it once. A complication - there are multiple series of streets, for example that series continues ... Lombard, South, Bainbridge ... east of the Schuylkill but ... Osage, Larchwood, Cedar, ... west of it.
(DC's solution to this is good although boring - the streets are lettered.)
(2) you can usually look at the street addresses to tell which way you're going, since they increase heading away from Market Street (north/south) or Front Street (west).
> (1) You need to memorize the order of the streets (... Vine, Race, Arch, Market, Chestnut, Walnut, Locust, Spruce, Pine, ...), which is mildly annoying but you just have to do it once. A complication - there are multiple series of streets, for example that series continues ... Lombard, South, Bainbridge ... east of the Schuylkill but ... Osage, Larchwood, Cedar, ... west of it.
This sounds like the worst possible implementation, or at least one of the worst existing implementations, of a grid. The navigator just has to know all the randomly assigned street names and their relationships - in other words, maximum cognitive load. It could only be worse with special rules, like streets changing names from one block to the next, which also apparently happens.
(Not shitting on Philly - my city is just as bad or worse)
> (DC's solution to this is good although boring - the streets are lettered.)
Essentially the same as NYC's then. It's predictable, has minimal cognitive load. If you can see any two parallel streets you can determine direction.
Avenue of the Americas is also marked as 6 Ave, so you don't need to know the name. You can see the sign for 20th street in one direction and 22nd in the other, so now you have a better sense of direction. Since you know which way the street numbers increase, you also know which directions to go to head toward 5th or 7th avenue.
I'll be honest, I've spent a lot more time in NYC than I have in Philly.. but it did not take long for me to get my bearings without knowing much about the city other than the directions in which the street and avenue numbers increase / decrease.
Something I can recommend is taking a bicycle and intentionally getting lost in the city. Cycle random intersections in random directions and you'll quickly start to build a mental map. You can go from being entirely new to having a mental map of an entire district in only a few hours.
This trick is trying to compress the years of walking and cycling and getting lost that you'd do as a child or teen into a single evening and it's really helpful at building a mental map.
This is interesting, when I lived in London (20+ yrs ago) I had an AtoZ at home and a street map in my car. I got to know London pretty well in terms of walking around. At lunchtimes I would try and see how far I could walk in the hour and what interesting landmarks I could pass. I pretty much learnt to drive in London and would cruise around at night just because it was a cool thing to do when you'd just got a car.
When I've been back more recently, I still remember my way round for the most part but I find myself having to check myself by phone every few minutes, so it's more the confidence that I've lost. Most of the original knowledge came not from a map but just wandering aimlessly and remembering. Strangely I have a similar approach to hiking in the hills and often just wing it, although I generally have both a map and a phone app OS map in my bag.
One of the main benefits of regular maps—or even Google Maps without GPS—is the ability to simply 'learn' the directions. You read the directions to a specific place, internalize that you have to "take X road for Y kilometres, then turn onto Z side street...", and you remember it. On the way back, or next time you go, you know how to get there.
Something I've noticed because of this is that older drives—used to standard maps—know how to get somewhere without using a map; i.e., you tell someone an intersection and they instinctively know the route. For younger people, like myself, this is definitely less so the case. We don't have that same geographical familiarity. It's like a feedback loop: we use turn-by-turn GPS because we don't know the route somewhere and in turn never learn it.
I haven't used a map to find a destination in at least 15 years, and there's no doubt that paper maps can't match GPS in accuracy and convenience, but it gives me the experience of exploration and discovery.
My wife and I have a whole pile of ordnance survey maps [0] for hiking. Nothing will replace it.
She was a Brownie [1] and we're doing similar stuff with our daughters (Geocaching is the big thing right now).
One issue with a physical map is, that human development and advancement is so fast, that in just 3 years, roads can appear where there were none before, old ones could get torn down.
I recently told my co-workers on a Zoom call that I ALWAYS carry a paper map in the car and anytime I am backpacking or traveling in Europe. They couldn't fathom why I would bother when I have a phone that can give me directions immediately.
I guess I am old enough to know how easy it is to read a map and not need turn by turn directions to get somewhere. Also, I find that I ONLY seem to need directions when my cell service bombs out...
We lose the necessity to learn the roads & lose the ability to read road signs.
"Keep in the right 2 lanes"
"Take the second lane from right"
Is different to
"Take the I-15 North towards Barstow"
And then there are people driving where all of the sudden their GPS tells them: in 1 mile take the exit... They have no clue how long a mile is, and they frantically try to make it from the left-most lane to the exit. Which is in half a mile.
I bought a 2023 road atlas the other day. I'll probably never use it but got it just in case GPS goes down and I need to get somewhere farther away than I usually travel. Just a backup in the event its needed. Seems like its something everyone should have tucked away somewhere. Will buy a new one every few years to keep it updated.
I recently needed that backup road atlas. Not because GPS went down, but because I dropped my phone, killed the display and had to make it home 400 miles.
Maps are like script handwriting. Obsolete in practice and it's a shame. Both offer real advantages. Both are not worth the effort compared to modern tools. It makes me sad.
But, it also reminds me that I have intended to own a comprehensive atlas for backup purposes, after the apocalypse (or I break my phone). Gonna do that today.
>Maps are like script handwriting. Obsolete in practice and it's a shame.
Hmm. Not a good analogy. Script handwriting adds no new information. A 1 meter square backcountry topo map provides way more info than looking at a handheld screen. I can see big picture terrain as well as high resolution of my immediate surroundings. Completely different sense of surroundings and the information is simultaneously clear in overall layout, dense, and abundant.
It is decidedly not obsolete. I would never take an extended backcountry trip without a detailed waterproof topo map and a compass. Stuff happens. Batteries fail, screens shatter, etc...
However, you don't have to go into the backcountry to benefit from a printed map. A city map will immediately impart a much better sense of spatial relations between different points and a more immediately intuitive understanding of the routing between the points.
I found myself amazed by map reading during the sailing school and sailing excercises. We were using detailed paper maps of Crotia's coastline and had an interesting practice to sail with just map (gps turmed off) during the night around Sibenik. Amazing experience
Ugh. I find these articles so annoying. Yes map reading isn't a skill most people need or want today. The goal isn't to view the map, it's to get from Point A to Point B. Understandably, some pople (nerds like us), will still love maps. But, for most it's extra-work for no payoff.
We could say the same thing about other outdated technology. "Kids today don't even bother to learn how to navigate by sextant, they're so lazy and lost". "I can't believe they don't teach how to use a loom anymore!"
Technology exists to free up mental power and to free up time to accomplish more rewarding tasks.
I could* learn how to use a loom and make my own clothes, but why would I possibly do that when I can by clothes made with slave labor for $1?
I could learn all the intricacies of using paper maps, but I have GPS/Galileo/GLONASS/NavIC/etc why would I bother? Maybe, if I were into exterme sports like backcountry-hiking (extreme when you don't hike), then it has a tangible benefit. But, I'm a lazy computer nerd and hiking directly conflicts with my laziness.
And then there's the "preppers" who say "Well what if GPS goes down!? How will you get to Taco Bell then!?" ... Okay, if things get to the point where navigation satellites go offline or become unusable, I'm probably dead, or otherwise hunkering down in place.
Typically these trails have marker posts at major intersections with a number on them, often an indicator pointing the way to the next number, and a colored arrow indicating the loop they are on.
After I started doing this, and watching people reading the maps at the trailhead, I was amazed that user split into two stark camps: those who can read maps and those who can't. For those who could, the maps are exactly what they need, be them print or on some OSM app or whatnot.
For those that couldn't... They would get amazingly lost quickly, even when the trails are sight-distance, no more than 100' or so, apart. I've helped folks who, as example, I show that the post has a #2 on the top, I show them the direction to #3 and that they can follow the "yellow" arrows, and they just freeze. And then sometimes ask if there's an app that will tell them which way to turn.
I grew up looking at maps, using them with signage and such for navigation as I learned to drive, and I never realized just how much I took this skill for granted until I encountered other adults who simply can't.
(An example map: https://trailmaps.app/pdf/riverbends/CRAMBA_River_Bends_Trai...)