Pathfinder

In times gone by not getting lost was a matter of life or death. One wrong turn could lead you to lion’s den or a foul death from thirst. Cultures navigated by tracking the sunrise-sunset or the stars position in the sky. Both land and sea bear traces of long and short term directional cues. The first seafarers kept in sight of land that was the first trick of navigation. One could line up landmarks, such as a near rock against a distant point on land; doing that in two directions at once gave a precise geometric location. They trailed clouds or odors which carried far out to sea.

Interpreting the behavior of birds a sailor built elaborate maps out of palm twigs and cowrie shells. Over thousands of miles of trackless ocean people could always find their way. Modern navigators still scratch their heads in amazement at their accomplishment. In today's modern world, private and commercial aircraft depend on a complex network of radio, satellite, inertial and other navigation systems. Any or all of these systems fail, the starry sky can serve as the last resort provided lucky to be caught during the night hours.

Humans get lost because we don't pay attention & have lost ancient ways of reading the environment to navigate. The sense of direction withers with disuse, studies have found that using GPS seems to impair people's navigational skills. Many people get lost because they simply aren't paying attention. Humans use landmarks, directional cues, a sense of how far they've traveled, as well as myriad other cues to go vastly more places, often with no prior knowledge.

When forging ahead on a long trek look back and take a mental photograph to visualize the area from multiple orientations. We visualize different routes in our minds to plan how to get from one place to another. These routes vary from person to person on the basis of differing navigational strategies. We reduce things to the simplest curves straighten them, weird angles make them right angles & make square what's not square at all. The reason is it reduces memory load. It's much easier for us to remember something that's got a very simple geometry than something that doesn't.

People say that women are more likely to navigate with landmarks and men are more likely to navigate using the cardinal directions (north, south, east and west).

“The ability to tell a good route from a terrible one is a valuable skill when leading an expedition. Unfortunately for us all, it was a skill I did not possess.” 
― Tahir Shah