"I think that's a clear overgeneralization. Perhaps the respondent learned the names of rivers simply by looking at maps. I can't speak for anyone else, but by and large, I did not. Of course, somehow I managed to avoid taking a formal geography class." "The respondent"?? I don't have a name? I haven't had a formal geography class since maybe ... trying to think back to the dark ages of early high school and before ... maybe eighth grade. I just like maps. When a person becomes sufficiently familiar with something, his/her knowledge will resemble _understanding_ more than memorization. In my amateur astronomer persona, I feel that I know the constellations well enough that I understand them, not just memorize their positions -- i.e. I can "feel" intuitively which constellation will be rising next in the southeast when I'm out observing, or what time of year is good for observing a particular one. The same point was made about people who have sufficient knowledge of US geography plus the system by which interstate numbers were assigned. This Pagan loves rivers -- from doing meditations on their banks about them as part of the water cycle (more symbolically, carrying the lifeblood of Mother Earth), to telling myself while hiking "From tiny mountain streams are born great rivers", to entitling one of the more romantic chapters of one of my fiction works "Loire and Shenandoah". So don't try to out-river-appreciate me! But I also like looking at road- and political maps, always have. Doug
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