Walking in Circles

"walking in circles" by angrytoast

 When we went on our Corbin Cabin retreat, one of our skill sessions was about map reading and cross-country navigation. Most hikers use topographic maps to find and follow various marked trails, but sometimes the view you want to see is off the trail and you need to "bushwack" or hike cross-country off trail. If the distance is short, this is no problem, but when humans walk long distances cross-country we tend to walk in circles.

And we're not sure why.

In a recent NPR story "A Mystery: Why Can't We Walk Straight?"
Robert Krulwich interviews Jan Souman, one of the co-authors of "Walking Straight Into Circles" published in the August 2009 issue of Current Biology.  In blindfold experiments run on various topographies from the Saharah Desert to the Bienwald forest in Germany, subjects invariably ended up walking in circles.

 During our Corbin Cabin retreat we addressed one way to avoid such circling using map and compass. For example, if we wanted to bushwack from Corbin Cabin to Camp Ridge Trail, first we would lay the edge of our compass on the map so as to connect the cabin with the point we want to hit on Camp Ridge Trail. Next, we would turn compass housing or outer ring of the compass so the underlying red orienting arrow lined up with the compass needle pointing North. On some compasses this gives us the direction of travel in degrees, but even without them, the hiker can stay oriented. Holding the compass so that the orienting arrow arrow aligns with the North (red) end of the compass needle, you will be faced toward the goal. By choosing a series visible landmarks like notable trees, large rocks or other obvious features that are directly in line with the direction of travel arrow, the hiker can travel in a relatively straight line to the chosen destination and avoid ending up walking in circles. The success of this involves stopping to realign the orienting and magnetic North arrows at each landmark to re-orient to the goal before choosing the next landmark.

To accomplish this, the hiker must be a close observer of detail on his compass, his map and his terrain.  Such close reading is also important in literary studies where interpretive moves require attention to detail and occasional re-orientation. For example, our literary "bushwack" might involve using our reflective compass to trace a line connecting narrative events that are not directly connected by the writer. In Cormac McCarthy's sobering novel The Road we might wish to connect the occasional but disconnected geographic details and descriptions McCarthy gives to see if we can recognize and identify the specific route the characters take.
Wesley Morgan of the University of Tennessee does this in his hypertext "The Route and Roots of the Road" where he tracks these details, landmark by landmark, to reconstruct the route and locates it in the southeastern US.

For more detailed instructions about map and compass orientation see Kjetil Kjernsmo's illustrated guide on how to use a compass or Princeton's excerpt on map and compass work from The Backpacker's Field Manual by Rick Curtis.