Instinctive navigation

[Smokey]

I was out in Thetford Forest at the weekend, and decided to conduct a (very unscientific) experiment. I've believed for some time that most people have an inbuilt navigational facility, which they're probably not aware of but which can in broad terms set them in the right direction. I thought I'd to put this to the test by trying to get myself lost in order to see if I could still find my way back successfully without any map etc. The area I chose is relatively flat, with large and apparently identical stands of commercially-planted conifers and little else, so doesn't give you much to go in on terms of navigation. I don't know the area from memory, and it's full of remarkably similar-looking tracks. Granted, it was just a light-hearted little test, and it's not as if I was lost in the middle of miles of trackless moorland, but I discovered that I could navigate my way around reasonably efficiently and found my way back to my starting point after doing my best to get disorientated. I wonder whether any other people on here have any experience of this sort of "instinctive navigation". I ought to add, by the way, that I had a map, compass, and functioning GPS in my rucksack just in case!

[Andy BB]

No. I can lose my tent 20 yards away from the campfire at night!

[Hammock Hamster]

Not sure if this qualifies but i have had it pointed out on several occasions that i seem to have a pretty good sense of direction and can find my way back to places previously visited without the aid of a map 9 times out of 10.

The most recent i can think of was a few months back when on a trip to a relatevely small area of forest, about 4-5 sqare miles at most.
We had been to this area once before about 6 months previously and i managed to find the area we last camped first time from memory, the area itself was deep within the woods and well away from any footpaths.
That night one of my group decided he needed an "emergency" trip to the petol station for cigarettes so decided to conduct a similar experiment.
I set a waypoint on my gsp just in case and we headed off on the 7 mile round trip to the station and back at around 11pm in the pitch black.

I managed to find our way out of the forest with no problem and on the way back managed to get us within 20 feet of our campsite before resorting to the gps.
I think if we had left one person in camp with a fire buring i would have managed to find it without the aid of any technology but it just went to show even with a reasonably good sense of natural direction etc... conditions, in this case darkness, really do make an impact.
Even though we had torches, which i refused to use until we really needed them im sure we walk within feet of the camp at one point without knowing it was there.

Hamster

[Bushwhacker]

I don't believe it's possible.

[RonW]

No, people do not have an instinctive sense of direction.
It can be taught/learned however, by learning to pay attention and look for details in the terrain as you go and memorise these. If practiced often enough it can become second nature, so you don't notice you're doing it, which may lead others, who have no clue of what their doing, to believe you are a natural....

[boatman]

I find that I could get apparently lost in forest and on moorland in the sense of not being certain where I was but would always find the exit back to the car or home in reasonable time. In other words deciding on a rigid route and sticking to it just didn't happen but a journey between two points or a circular one was no problem. Of course I had sometimes to walk further than if I had stuck to a fixed route but that didn't matter.

There were a few TV programmes on Natural Navigation but I couldn't see what the problems of the participants were in getting to their destination even without clues from moss on tress etc.

I have the books Natural Navigation and Let Nature Be Your Guide. They are very interesting and worth reading.

[Dark Horse Dave]

Agree with RonW here; it's not so much an instinct, more a skill that you have developed, incorporating observation, memory etc. Good to test yourself though.

For those who haven't come across him before, Tristan Gooley is a good source here (http://www.naturalnavigator.com/tristan-gooley/)

[Bushwhacker]

If you're walking through some woods you'll take the path of least resistance. You'd naturally do the same in the opposite direction.

[Mesquite]

Despite you trying your hardest to loose yourself you still knew the way you'd been and where you were.

Might have been more realistic if you had been blindfolded and wore ear plugs then lead by someone else in a circuitous route and told to find your way back

[rg598]

I get lost all the time.

[Harvestman]

I'm in the skill camp. I can see a place once, and then recognise it again even when approaching it from a completely different direction.

People talk about a sense of direction, but for me I find I have more of a sense of position - I know more or less where I am in relation to where I have been previously, so I can use 'aiming off' as a way of getting back to familiar territory.

[John Fenna]

I have rarely got lost when going somewhere I have been before but I put this down to unconciously picking up subtle clues from the goegraphy/environment/sun/stars/wind/smells etc that are all around, rather than a sense of direction....
I also tend to think pictorialy in 3D when problem solving...

[Skaukraft]

Psychologicaly theres a huge difference in pretending to be lost and really being lost.
"Navigation" without compass/map/GPS is 95% skill and 5% talent.

[Dannytsg]

As has been said I believe that you aren't born with instinctive navigation but a certain amount of ability for recognition. I for one conciously take in what i believe to be "landmarks" or terrain fetaures as I'm hiking off trail and keep them in memory should I ever come across them again.

I believe it just takes practice in order for someone to become better at navigation even in the simplest of terrains.

[Bushwhacker]

We should conduct a test in the middle of the jungle.

[Lordyosch]

On a weekend backpacking trip last year I tried a similar experiment. (I had map, compass, route card, GPS etc in pack) I set off away from the main road then used no artificial means to determine my route. Just worked from memory (of the map, 2 days previously) and the ground in front of me.

I ended up going along the wrong valley. I was about 2km out at the head of the valley.

The trip was a practice(excuse) trip before a week long solo trip to the the Picos De Europa.
WHen I was out in Spain I followed my route cards that I'd prepared and regularly checked the map. I was never more than 20m off planned route.

One day I went out to climb up Jultayu (1600m ish) and it was thick mist. All of my internal navigation senses thought I was walking the wrong way across a limestone/pothole area. I couldn't see 10m ahead. It just felt like I was heading away from my target.
The compass always told me I was on route. It just didn't feel like it.

In short, I reckon I have little natural ability to navigate. I am quite well trained though so as long as I actively navigate I should be fine. Its the assumptions that cock it up for me!

Jay

[georann]

This is something I've wondered for years if everyone could do it or whether I had the lamest super power ever! Seriously though, I can always tell the direction I need to head back to where I started but not neccessarily the route or distance! Possibly something more of a human compass that youre brain subconciously remembers how much you have turned and in what direction so you can always find youre way back (I can also always seem to point north even in entirely new locations but I guess its something to do with sub-conciously picking up on things in the environment such as sun position). I accidentally put this to the test the other week when I went for a walk in my local forest and did the stupid thing of trying out a new route without map or compass! None the less found my way back to the start, with only a few points of wondering whether I was in fact lost!

[Robbi]

This is something I've wondered for years if everyone could do it or whether I had the lamest super power ever! Seriously though, I can always tell the direction I need to head back to where I started but not neccessarily the route or distance! Possibly something more of a human compass that youre brain subconciously remembers how much you have turned and in what direction so you can always find youre way back (I can also always seem to point north even in entirely new locations but I guess its something to do with sub-conciously picking up on things in the environment such as sun position). I accidentally put this to the test the other week when I went for a walk in my local forest and did the stupid thing of trying out a new route without map or compass! None the less found my way back to the start, with only a few points of wondering whether I was in fact lost!

I'm exactly the same what i,ve figured is that i can "see" in my mind the route i've taken from above, just like looking at a map and always get back to where i started.......i thought it was just me.

A mate of mine, if you turned him round 3 times in his kitchen, he couldn't find the door ! i just don't understand that at all.

[georann]

I guess it varies person to person. I've lived in the countryside all my life and started off early and been a beaver, cub, scout etc so perhaps its just an in-built skills we learn sub-conciously

[Laurentius]

I definitely do not have an inbuilt navigation facility. I can remember once trying to cross a field in a pea souper of a fog, I ended up where I started from. Navigating through woods I have a familiarity with is a matter of memory not any inherent sense of direction.

[Wayland]

I generally have a good sense of direction but why I couldn't say.

Having said that I have got it spectacularly wrong on a couple of occasions when I thought I knew better.

I suspect that I usually pick up on clues like the wind direction and suns position in the sky without really being aware of it.

I'm always watching the light from a photographic point of view so it's no great stretch of the imagination to thing that I get a bit tuned into it.

Overall though I prefer to keep a compass about my person most of the time.

[Bushwhacker]

I would love to see some evidence for this inbuilt navigation that's 'only in some of us'.

[Andy BB]

I actually believe that it is possible that our ancestors actually had a highly-developed "navigation" faculty. But it has weakened as we've evolved.

So obviously, those with a strong "navigation" sense are less-evolved than those of us relying on technological aids - the "missing links", as it were

[Wayland]

Theories like that tend to be based upon 18th and 19th century contact with "primitive" peoples who were perfectly at home in their own environment.

European explorers couldn't understand why they could find their way around without "scientific" navigational instruments so they supposed that they must have special senses that "modern" humans no longer possessed.

It's right up there with phrenology and craniometry as ways of proving that "we" are superior to "them".

[Fingle]

Funnily enough I was having a similar conversation with an old hand at this bushcraft lark, regarding navigation sans GPS, map, compass etc. His opinion was that we all have the ability to work out approximately where we are in relation to our environment. This means we all have an in built facility to navigate through our environment, wich becomes the framework for finding our way in a familiar environment. When we are in an unfamiliar environment we have the same ability but less information from memory, to compare to. It is his belief that our dependence on familiarity is what leads us astray. We think we recognise a bit of landscape, either from false memory or false expectation of what ground will look like. If we put aside the traditional navigation aids (but importantly keep them for backup) we can try and learn how to interpret the environmental data. He particularly uses (and gave me a quick demo) the position of the sun, stars, moon and weather. He had me tearing around the Welsh border using the sun, wind and ridge lines as reference points. I have resolved to get him to show me more.

I'm not saying this is a form of inbuilt GPS like in pigeons, more a different skill set, like using a fire drill or knowing where different wild foods are likely to be found.


Gfingle

[Andy BB]

Theories like that tend to be based upon 18th and 19th century contact with "primitive" peoples who were perfectly at home in their own environment.

European explorers couldn't understand why they could find their way around without "scientific" navigational instruments so they supposed that they must have special senses that "modern" humans no longer possessed.

It's right up there with phrenology and craniometry as ways of proving that "we" are superior to "them".

Clearly our sense of humour hasn't developed to offset the navigational loss

[Wayland]

Sorry if it came off as snippy, that wasn't how I meant it.

A lot of persistent and firmly held beliefs have origins in historical ignorance like the "horns on helmets" issue with the Vikings.

I spend my life having to set the record straight so I guess I come over as a bit trigger happy at times.

[320ccc]

We should conduct a test in the middle of the jungle.

actually (if you'd like to be embarrassed) try a city.

most of the us west of the mississippi is laid out on n/s e/w grid. pretty easy to get around on.

the earliest settlements and land were surveyed with some random vacant method of natural landmarks (which go away).

some cities are laid out in perfect squares as are most rural roads. determine your e/w line, n/s follows and off you go.

but what happens when things were set up with part of an area parallel to a river and the rest laid out with a news orientation? the correct answer is you get lost.

i don't know if it's a real term but i call the path some roads and boundaries are laid out on a meander line. they just go where they go. people ,i think, just meander as well.

i think you can learn and use some navigational cues. but i also think most people are lost most of the time

[ged]

actually (if you'd like to be embarrassed) try a city.

most of the us west of the mississippi is laid out on n/s e/w grid. pretty easy to get around on.

the earliest settlements and land were surveyed with some random vacant method of natural landmarks (which go away).

some cities are laid out in perfect squares as are most rural roads. determine your e/w line, n/s follows and off you go.

but what happens when things were set up with part of an area parallel to a river and the rest laid out with a news orientation? the correct answer is you get lost. ...

A loooong time ago I was working with some Americans on a business deal. They flew over to England (on Concorde) to meet the people involved and checked into a hotel (the Savoy). (They were that sort of people.)

This was the afternoon. They were due to meet us in Oxford in the evening.
Well, they had plenty of time so they decided to go and take a quick look at London.
A quick look was going to be, in their words later (much later) "a walk round the block".
In America, a walk round the block means that you walk, turn, walk, turn in the same direction, walk, turn in the same direction, walk, turn in the same direction, and walk back to where you started.
That might work in America, but about the only place it stands a chance in England is Milton Keynes and it sure as hell won't work on the banks of the Thames.
We didn't get to meet them that evening. They explained all this the next day.


If you want to read about some very impressive navigational feats, get hold of a copy of "We, the Navigators".

http://www.amazon.co.uk/We-Navigator.../dp/0824815823

[BOD]

Having just come out of 4300 s km of jungle I can tell you the "natural" inbuilt navigation stuff is BS. Its all about being natuarlly observant or having to be trained. Some do it subconciously while the rest have to conciously do it.

You can dumb yourself easily. i have a good sense of observation but at a conciuous level and can find my way mapless and compass-less in areas I know but when I use the GPS track and focus on its track and surroundings, I found that I turned myself around as soon as i tired to go "instinctive" w/o the GPS.