The Best American Travel Writing 2011 (24 page)

 

After finally findi ng the park, we stand at its edge. I hear movement in the leaves, and both my father and I look up from the map to see a dozen deer. They seem to see us as well, but they don't take off the way deer usually do on the side of the road. Instead, they run gracefully, slowly—jog, really.

I tell my dad that I have never been so close to so many deer. They were only twenty yards away. Or maybe a hundred yards. Or a hundred feet? Two hundred?

The ability to estimate distances is closely tied to sense of direction. Is that building fifty feet away or three hundred yards? No idea? Me neither. This is a telltale sign of a poor sense of direction. Other questions to help determine one's directional abilities include
Can you read a map? Do you like looking at maps? Can you use a map without turning it to orient your actual placement?
Umm, no, no, and no.
Do you recall the locations of things, like, say, the salad dressing aisle at the grocery store?
Absolutely not.
Can you automatically reverse directions? Do you easily find your way around unfamiliar buildings?
No and no.

A lot of these indicators refer to "mental rotation" skills, also known as the ability to conjure up a "cognitive map." The idea of a cognitive or mental map, introduced by psychologist Edward C. Tolman of UC Berkeley in 1948, is one of the only ways we can measure sense of direction, or at least our ability to store and retrieve information about our environment. Essentially, a cognitive map is an imagined setting. If you close your eyes and picture your childhood bus stop, or the layout of your house, you're creating a cognitive map. Some people suggest that those of us with a poor sense of direction either don't make such maps, make only limited versions of them, or can make them but can't reclaim information from them.

Most commonly, however, mental rotation skills determine whether or not you have to turn the map to figure out which direction is which. If you use mental rotation, and use it well, you don't need to turn the map; the manual rotators inside your brain do it for you. Mental rotation skills also allow us to imagine what something looks like from the side, or upside down, whether it's a painting or the layout of a neighborhood. Many people have adequate mental rotation skills for a certain period, but lose them when things get complicated. For example, I may be able to keep track of the direction of the highway for a couple of turns after the exit, but after a few more, I lose my bearings completely.

On orienteering day, there is a lot of map turning.

We leave the deer and walk down a short path, following the triangle-shaped, orange
ORIENTEERING!
signs. We find the registration table and get in line. We avoid eye contact with our fellow orienteerers and instead make jokes about their tight pants. Every few minutes someone takes off running from the front of the line—it is a timed sport—and darts suddenly into the woods while holding up a map in one hand and a compass in the other. We both laugh hysterically every time this happens.

When we reach the table, we're given a small, plastic "e-card." A man behind the table instructs us to insert it into the electronic punch unit by each flag, or checkpoint, along the orienteering route to confirm that we successfully found it. We're then told three times:
You must punch the e-card at the end so we know you've made it out of the woods.
The orange e-card slides onto my middle finger, and I slip the attached wristlet over my hand, imagining the search party that will surely be sent out for us.

"There are a lot of people with foreign accents," my dad says. I turn to him, ready to reprimand him for what I think might be an inappropriate comment when I realize that there really
are
a lot of different accents. It makes sense. Orienteering originated in Sweden in the early 1900s but wasn't introduced to the United States until the middle of the century. Local clubs here branch out from the U.S. Orienteering Federation (USOF), but apparently the group isn't much for marketing, as the "Sport of a Lifetime" never really caught on in this country the way it did in Europe and other areas of the world.

After waiting in another line for a few minutes, I trade the car keys for a compass, as collateral, and ask a man behind the table when the "orienteering orientation" I read about on the website will begin. I'm told that it isn't as formal as all that, but he'd be happy to give me a quick introduction. I wave my dad over and we all look at a map in a plastic covering. The man holds the compass against the map, showing us how to determine "north," both on the page and in the park. He then places his finger on one of the marked checkpoints and turns the compass, explaining that by determining the direction of the destination in relation to north by using the compass, we will know exactly where to trek.

I glance at my dad and he raises his eyebrows, lifting one corner of his mouth as if to say, "I hope
you're
getting this."

I picture us lost in the woods, trampled by deer, who probably despise orienteering day—all the spandex, all the e-card beeping. I imagine them discussing what in the hell it is all these assholes are doing out here in the rain anyway.
A compass?
I hear them say.
Ridiculous.

Sense of direction in animals is both (a) easier to study than it is in humans, and (b) really, crazy impressive, comparatively. Case in point: one species of snail, when taken from its home in a cloth bag, is able to orient itself and find its way back for up to forty miles. Last week, I went to a new CVS approximately three miles from my house. I got lost on the way home.

Migratory birds are often noted as having the most impressive animal sense of direction, which makes sense. About 80 percent of North American birds migrate, some over oceans and across continents. One bird, called the red knot, travels eighteen thousand miles round trip each year from the tip of South America to the Arctic and back again.

For years, theories have been thrown around about sense of direction in migratory birds. The birds use landmarks, some people said, or they depend upon an amazing sense of smell. They use the stars, others suggested. It turns out they use an internal, magnetic compass, which is, in a sense, recalibrated every night based on the direction of the sun as it sets. In 2004 scientists tracked migratory songbirds—gray-cheeked thrushes—catching them just before their departure and placing them in an artificial magnetic field. When they were released, the birds flew through the night on the wrong path, and then stopped and corrected themselves by 90 degrees, back toward their desired destination, as soon as the sun rose.

At least we understand the need for the birds' sense of direction. They migrate. Fair enough. Some animal behavior related to directional sense, though, remains a mystery. Last year, after looking at photo after photo of cattle fields, a team of German and Czech researchers discovered that cows tend to align their bodies facing either directly north or directly south, regardless of where they are in the world. Why are they lined up this way? How do they know to do it? Although it's assumed that the positioning has to do with the magnetic fields of the earth, no one seems to be clear on the specifics. These invisible magnetic lines might be strong enough for the cows to sense them, but why is that beneficial to the animals? No one knows.

The magnetic field is oddly prevalent in all kinds of animal orientation. Termites line up along its cardinal axes—either north to south or east to west. If the nest is turned, they will reorient themselves to these directions. If a strong magnet is placed above the nest, it throws them off. Yellow eels also use the magnetic field. Honeybees do too. And salmon.

Homing pigeons are more of a mystery. It was long thought that they, too, relied solely upon the magnetic field to find their way. In studies that disrupt the field, the pigeons' path was thrown off. But, in 2004, after tracking pigeons with GPS satellites for ten years, researchers at Oxford University announced their—let's be honest, ludicrous—findings: rather than using the sun for directional bearings, it turns out that the pigeons use roads they've traveled in the past as a guide, turning at junctions and, sometimes, even going around traffic circles. Then, three years after this study, different scientists found that iron-containing structures within the birds' beaks apparently also aid in their sense of direction. They might even have the ability to use "atmospheric odors." Long story short: when it's time to flee, those pigeons are going to be safe in some faraway bunker long before I am. Apparently so will snails and termites.

 

"Okay," my dad says as we start walking. "The lake is over there, and according to the map, we're supposed to curve around to the left of it."

I raise the compass on the string around my neck. "Should we be using this?" I ask.

"It's up to you," he says. I look at the map and realize that we should be able to use the landmarks—the lake, the marked trails—instead. (Read: we should be able to cheat.) This is helpful, because neither of us, we agree, understands how to use the compass in relation to finding our way around this park.

Like calculating square footage or break dancing, using a compass is something I've repeatedly tried and failed at. I get the basic concept, but not the next steps:
The needle is pointing NW, so...?
Other people apparently love these things, though. There's a surprisingly big market, it turns out, for compass-related gifts. One can purchase compass tie tacks, compass cufflinks, compass necklaces, pocket compasses. I adore the idea of a businessman standing in the woods, holding up his French-cuffed sleeve to see if he should head deeper into the trees or turn back. Two different people have given me compasses for my car. The thought is there, but they're practically worthless. I can't picture my destination on a map anyway, so I don't know which way I'm supposed to be going, even if I can determine north, south, east, or west.

My dad and I do not use the compass once the whole day.

Whether it's animals homing in on magnetic fields, or the orienteerers using their hand-held compasses, most scientists agree that magnetics plays a large part in one's sense of direction. In the late seventies, an experiment was done that proved magnetic fields contributed in some way to the "internal compass" of humans as well. Scientists loaded up a bus and blindfolded the passengers and announced that they were placing magnetic bars on everyone's heads, although in reality half were magnetic and half were brass. The bus drove around for a while, then the scientists asked everyone to identify their current compass direction. Overwhelmingly, those wearing magnets were less capable than the control (brass) group.

Magnetics plays a role, but it's not
all
magnetics. It's not
all
anything, in fact. Mysteries breed myth, and sense of direction is a big enough mystery that all the crazies come out with their suggestions.
Poor sense of direction stems from left-handedness
, some say.
Oh, it's tied to dyslexia
, others claim.
People with a poor sense of direction are simply inattentive.
Or,
They're stupid.
Some say,
Sense of direction is connected to geometry. Can't understand angles? You won't have any directional abilities.
Others argue,
People with no sense of direction are proba
bly mildly dyspraxic
(a disorder related to difficulty carrying out a plan, physical or otherwise). Still others say that it stems from not spending enough time outside as a kid. Or that those involved in sports at a young age develop a better spatial ability and, therefore, a better sense of direction.

Then there is, of course, the gender theory.

"Men have a better sense of direction because of the whole 'hunter-gatherer' thing, I think," my uncle tells me when I bring it up. "We were supposed to go out and collect food and roam away from the cave to do it, whereas women were safest staying in one place, taking care of the babies."

This is a surprisingly popular theory, at least among people I know, which may say something about the people I know. It's a hot topic among scientists as well, although it rings distinctly true or false depending on whom you ask. While there are definite gender differences in the way people approach finding their way, no one seems to agree on whether the approaches taken by men or by women are more effective.

Men are more likely to use "survey strategies"—using north, south, east, and west descriptors—than women. Women are more likely than men to use route strategies, such as landmarks, or stating the approximate time it takes to travel between two locations. Neither strategy is proven to be markedly more effective than the other.

Women do, however, consistently rate their sense of direction as worse than men. We also know that among children, boys do have better mental rotation skills. In one study, girls and boys were each given a map and asked to "mentally" make their way across town without rotating it. Then they were asked to state whether they would be turning left or right at particular intersections. The boys, unfortunately, rocked this experiment compared to the girls. Some attribute higher testosterone levels during fetal development, suspecting that they may aid in developing the part of the brain responsible for mental rotation, but no one can really say how much this has to do with factors more associated with "nurture" than "nature."

Some research does suggest that this spatial ability carries over into adulthood, and other researchers adamantly dispute it. One study, conducted by what I'm guessing was a pretty unpopular researcher, suggests not only that women have a worse sense of direction than men, but that gay men have a worse sense than straight men. The study showed gay men, straight women, and lesbians navigating with the same weaknesses, which included a lack of ability to rely on local landmarks, increased time needed to analyze spatial information, and poor routing in general.

What researchers do agree on is markers: If I ask the average man how to get to the Thai restaurant near my house, he'd tell me to go eight hundred yards and then turn left, then wind down the road for another half of a mile. The average woman would tell me to turn left at the yellow house, and then go down until I see the coffee shop. When I see it, I'll know the restaurant is just a few minutes farther. In explaining a route, men will more often cite distances and cardinal directions like "north" or "west." Usually, women cite landmarks.