What is geography, It's magic!

Often I find myself answering the question "What does a geographer do?" with the witty come back "Everything" to the dismay of friends and family. In the professional sense I tell employers I gather data, where I look for trends in data about location, place, human-environment interaction, movement, and regions and how interact with each other, and that I can show these trends on everything from a map to a bar-graph. Where this is the most specific singular sentence I can use to describe geography, I think Judy Martz said it best as, "Everything has to do with geography."

The modern Geographer needs to know just about everything. This should be evident to the nature of its goals but I will elaborate. Every geographer will have to have at minimum knowledge of, Earth Science, mathematics/statistics, rhetoric, cultural diversity, cartography and navigation. Which gives them the ability to understand and elaborate on data. Modern geographers also should know many tools (computers, compass maps, software, Global Information Systems, geological hammers, microscopes just to name a few). The goal of geography is to make information about the world accessible or useable. This means a geographer is not only using math to prove a fact but also dictating a train of thought about the philosophical argument. Geographers will use law, science, behavior psychology, math, literature, and philosophy to establish concrete data on a subject. This is due to the broad spectrum of data a geographer will use.

For example: A geographer is collecting data about a region to build a new damn in a flooded valley. They will survey, measure and map the selected valley, locate and identify human/animal populations that may need relocating, identify geographic substrata to determine if an area has enough impermeable surface to retain said dam water, they will need compose data to be usable by planning committees and engineers. All the while looking at how changes to a region will impact future development, economy and environmental impact. Although this data maybe collected by a number of specialized geographers, the amount of overlap in work and administration of the project requires a geographer to know a broad skill set. Let alone a broader knowledge base makes for a more marketable geographer.
So consider this:

There are two major fields of study of Geography, subdivided into Physical and Human geography which include at least the following:
• Physical geography: including geomorphology, hydrology, glaciology, biogeography, climatology, pedology, oceanography, geodesy, and environmental geography.
• Human geography: including urban geography, cultural geography, economic geography, political geography, historical geography, marketing geography, health geography, and social geography.

Every geographer I personally know constantly studies each of these fields because the overlapping data is always useful. Example: A Hydrologist needs to understand the physical geo-sciences of geomorphology, glaciology, climatology, and environmental geography just because how they add data to how water moves on/in landmass. Hydrologist will have a vast knowledge about how water will impact human geography, including concepts of culture, economics, politics, health and social/historical conflicts.

Every geographer I know is at least an amateur geologist and a skilled cartographer.
Most are computer savants, and skilled mathematicians.
The best geographers I know can program a computer or write programs.
Simply put geographers are the most experienced and skilled people. Which is evident since no one can tell what we are doing.

It brings to mind three "laws" of prediction formulated by the British writer and scientist Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke's Three Laws are:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

So the next time someone asks me "What does a geographer do?" And I give them an honest answer and receive a blank look. I am going to tell them it's Magic. Geography is just magic.

Johannes Vermeer, The Geographer 1668-69 oil on canvas; 53×47 cm. Steadelsches Kunstinstitut Frankfurt, Germany