In general, I have no idea what direction is what. But in Colorado Springs, there’s very few places in the city you can’t see the mountains, and the mountains are always west. Once I get closer to the Divide, I don’t have the slightest clue.
ETA:
Well, what Thudlow Boink said. What a ninja!
I am most of the time, but not 100% by any means. I’ve been a map geek since I first learned what a map was,
When I was getting my pilot’s license I was required to show competence in both types of navigation, which even have formal names.
Your style of navigating is called “ded reckoning”.
The other style is “pilotage”.
Most people tend to favor one or the other. Statistically, men are more likely to ded reckon and women more likely to pilotage, but there’s so much flipping of that (men using pilotage, women ded reckoning) that making assumptions based on gender is probably not a good idea.
Both forms of navigation have their strengths and weaknesses, which is why ares of endeavor which require accuracy of navigation in all conditions make use of both - trans-ocean travel, aviation, etc.
Personally, I like being bi-navigational and able to communicate directions in a manner that will make the most sense and be useful to the person I am addressing. I also like that I can understand and use directions given by almost everyone else.
You, the OP, may be interested in this language where there are no egocentric directions and all directions much be given using cardinal terms - if I don’t manage to cue up to the correct time in the video the discussion of Guugu Yimithirr starts at 8:27:
Yep - Guugu Yimithirr. See above link.
No, and hell no. I go into the department store, get on the elevator, step out onto the upper floor. You ask me “what direction is the door we came in?” and I shrug. I certainly couldn’t point towards the parking lot the car’s parked in.
Locally, I have a loose grid of major roads in my mind: Hillside runs east-west, so the major intersecting roads run north-south. Except often they don’t:
Here’s Marcus Ave, intersecting with that beforementioned Hillside running east-west
Within seconds of getting onto that damn snake, I could not point to any cardinal point other than “up” or “down”.
Generally, yes.
Like @enipla, I’m in GIS, and I also spent several years as a land surveyor… I keep a map of some sort in my head at all times (built up as needed as I travel).
Being in flat, featureless areas can be quite disorienting though, and it isn’t a feeling I like.
Most of the time I am very aware of N, S, E, and W. The only time I get mixed up is when I’m indoors.
Nitpick: It’s “dead reckoning” — calculating your position by reference to speed, direction and time elapsed since you were at a known point. You’re calculating your position by reference to where you would be if you had remained dead in the water. The advantage of dead reckoning is that you should be able to calculate your position even when no landmarks or beacons are detectable. The disadvantage is that it’s very difficult — a great many variables have to be accounted for.
I have generally been really quite good at this. Really good. But …
Our previous houses were all aligned reasonably well with the major direction N-S. Our new house is completely askew. Not even aligned on a NNE or whatever axis. Furthermore, our street subtlety curves so in walking to the mailboxes in the evening I am regularly surprised by the Sun setting 90 degrees off from where my intuition says it should. Especially when there’s a near full Moon rising in the “opposite” (to me) direction from where I think west should be.
It’s one of those things that where I get it wrong at first and it becomes difficult to reprogram my brain.
Not even a little bit. My rearview mirror has one of those little compass displays, and it’s very much a “well if you say so” situation.
Zero sense of direction, zero spatial awareness.
I have absolutely no sense of direction.
Same.
Yup, interstate signs, in particular, are very good that way.
All that being said, when i lived in NYC, which is on a (mostly) compass grid, i did navigate by cardinal directions. I still had no innate sense of direction, but every time i emerged from a subway station i would look for the sun to orient myself, and proceed from there.
It’s a weird subconscious thing. I suppose something we learned based on maps before our directional senses became more refined.
I think “towards the ocean” is a much more natural direction to keep in mind than “towards the north pole”.
When i visited Hawaii i always knew where the ocean was and where the mountains were.
Yes, I like to think so. I think of things in “towards New England”, “towards Lake Erie” and “towards California” and “south” (heh)
Now, I can’t be 100% sure because rarely have I ever gone to an unfamiliar place without looking at a map first (even back in the day, when maps were on paper). But for sure once I’ve looked at a map I can orient myself in a place.
I like to think it’s because I grew up with a major freeway next to my house, so all day and all night I heard the sound of “north.” But maybe I just like maps a lot.
In Cleveland, my home, I have a good sense of north, which I am sure is in some way related to the lake. But there are also places (like Philadelphia) where I have no sense of direction at all, and other places where I have a sense of direction, but it’s wrong. Unsurprisingly, the places where it’s wrong include other places next to Great Lakes: In Chicago, my “north sense” points east, and in Toronto, it points south. But there are also places far from lakes where it’s wrong: For instance, my grandmother’s house was on a steep hillside, and I always think of that hillside as facing north, even though I think it’s actually southeast. Oddly, my sense of direction also works, and correctly, in Bozeman, with no lake and where the dominant landmark is a mountain range to the northeast (the next-most-prominent mountains are southeast, and then southwest). I think what I might actually be sensing is the slope of the land: I think of the downhill direction as north.
My sense of direction is also definitely influenced by the local road grid. For instance, in downtown Cleveland, everyone knows that Superior goes east-west, and Ontario goes north-south, which means that Euclid, which comes off at an angle, is east-south-east. But if you look at a map,
you see that the entire grid is rotated, so Superior is more like southwest-northeast, Ontario is northwest-southeast, and Euclid is actually slightly north of east. This effect from the road grid can sometimes throw me off badly when three roads form a triangle, and none of them is named in a way which indicates which way it nominally goes.I do not have a great sense of direction, no. I have to stop and think about which way is north, south, east, west, even if I’m close to home.
Years ago I read about a guy who built a thing where he installed beepers on a belt and rigged it so the beeper that faced north would vibrate. After awhile of being ‘trained’ with his north-facing beeper belt invention, he developed an almost superpower-like ability to know exactly where he was at all times. He could be a long way from home and be able to point to the exact direction where it was without hesitation.
I am generally if not always.
My wife does not at all, and will take the piss it I use cardinal directions when describing where something is (are we 17th century explorers!!?!). I dunno if that’s age thing (she largely grew up with GPS) or British/American thing?
The majority of the time I’m outdoors, yes. Probably not much more than 50%, but definitely more often than not.
Indoors, not that often.
When dropped into the middle of a new city I try to make sure I know which way north so as I build a mental map while exploring the area it is the correct orientation. I have to do this early on or else I risk building a disoriented mental map which is near impossible to re-orient once it’s embedded firmly in the noggin. This happened recently on my first trip to Denver where after arriving at my downtown hotel thought that the front of the hotel faced south while in reality it faced northeast. Left the hotel on foot and explored the area. So my entire mental map of the downtown Denver area is completely disoritented and will likely never be fixed.
Usually. If I’m in a new location, I’d use my wristwatch to find south.
When I was learning to fly I was told by the teacher that men tend to think in terms of grids (N,S,E,W) and women tend to think in terms of landmarks. Both have their advantages in the cockpit. A lot of navigation is following an instrument heading but looking out the window is more landmark oriented. Keeping a landmark visually fixed in the windscreen helps with short term navigation.
I have found this true in real life. Directions given by women tend to focus on landmarks. Turn left at the BP gas station, right at the big white house next to a barn.