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November 18, 2023

Circling

I love to go off trail. Sometimes it’s just wandering between paths in our woods. Sometimes it’s to find a landmark, a peak or pond, a cabin or corner. Discoveries await and I always see more than expected. As a high school earth science teacher, I’ve taught map and compass for over 30 years and as a fire lookout for the U.S. Forest Service in Idaho, I’ve plotted fire locations and guided firefighters to lightning strikes for decades. So, it was a humbling shock to find myself lost October 25th 2023 in the headwaters of the North Branch of the Grass near Church Pond while leading an Adirondack Mountain Club bushwhacking hike.

Having recently read Michael Bond’s fine book on navigation (From Here to There: The Art and Science of Finding and Losing Our Way, 2020, Harvard Press), I touted it as we walked to Church Pond. Both my companions, John and Sue, were experienced and able navigators. In his book, Bond describes fascinating brain science, ways to orient ourselves and the detrimental effects of dependence on GPS. On the outward journey, we used GPS to plot our path, but on the return, I switched off the GPS plotting. Paying attention to our surroundings and navigating without GPS, according to a McGill researcher in the book, can “help protect the hippocampus against the decline that usually comes with age.” And why not try a different path?

After lunch at the pond, we admired the golden tamaracks, the large hemlocks and yellow birches and began our return trip. The sun was completely hidden behind clouds. There was no wind. The forest is thick with magnificent old growth trees and scattered boulders covered with moss and lichen. With larger groups I tend to be cautious, calculating angles on the topographic map and using my trusty Silva Ranger compass to keep on track. This ramble with friends took us through old trees, chatting as we went, and I paid little attention to directional details. But I knew the hill would stay on our left, bringing us back east to the head of Fox Marsh and the boundary of the Forest Preserve. This would be easy.

After walking for perhaps 20 minutes, I began to get an uneasy feeling about our direction. I pulled out the GPS, quietly, just to see the map, still not recording a track, but looking at the point on the map where we were. Hmmm. We hadn’t gone as far as I thought. The arrow looked to be pointed slightly off, so I adjusted our direction. When we stopped later for a break, John took out his GPS for the first time. His device had still been plotting. The path I’d walked was a complete circle with a radius of less than a quarter mile! I had walked completely around the hill, keeping it on my left. I was stunned, grateful John had a record of it, and chagrined at my casual route finding.

So, what went wrong? As Bond writes, “In a dense woodland… or in a fog, it is almost impossible to walk in a straight line for more than a few meters.” Yet Indigenous people, familiar with landmarks, accomplish amazing feats of navigation. Mental maps and elder’s place-based stories help. Walking in circles, though, is surprisingly easy without landmarks and, though seemingly improbable, “many experiments have found it to be true.” People have even been found to “veer both ways depending on where they are.” Bond notes that researchers have found “people will not travel more than around 100 meters from their starting position, regardless of how long they walk.” So, in theory, I could have led us in circles all afternoon.

Getting truly lost is one of the most terrifying and life-threatening experiences possible. Staying calm in such a situation is hard. Yet knowing you’re only 100 meters from where you got confused might help. What would I do to prevent this happening again?

• Use the map and compass from the start! Determine the compass angle to the destination (either use a protractor between points or know how to use the compass as a protractor) and walk that angle (using the correction for magnetic declination). Sight to a distant point and walk to it before using the compass for the next reading.
• Use a printed topographic map and know how to read the contour lines and distances. Orient the map to the land.
• Yes, bring a GPS (or an app on your phone like Gaia GPS) and record a track. But don’t rely on it for walking a straight line: walking a compass line is more reliable. And batteries do run down.
• Get out there and get lost! Not truly, dangerously lost, but go off trail, discover, and be prepared to circle. Pay attention to details along the way. Trust the compass and, with others, memorize features. Keep the hippocampus active and engaged. As Bond writes so well, wander for the “vivid experience of place and the knowledge that you are here.”

(Thank you, John and Susan Omohundro, for putting up with my inattentive wandering!)

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