Seattle used to have signs (maybe still does) that say “No parking west of here.” I always found that amusing, given that not everyone is going to know which way is west. It usually was clear (to me) because the sign was about 20 feet from the intersection, and what they meant was “no parking between here and the corner.”
This is me, too. It makes me nuts when people give directions like, “Go over to Main Street and the restaurant is on the left.” They don’t seem to realize that left and right change depending on what direction you’re going. But if I say to them, “Go south-- you know, toward downtown,” they just give me the deer-in-headlights look. I just about always know my orientation in space.
I’ve also always loved maps, and if Google Earth had been around when I was a kid, I’d never have left the house.
I almost never know where I am. I’m not entirely sure where my house is, but the one cardinal direction I know is the road to my subdivision runs north to south. I’m not sure which direction my house faces and I’m trying really hard to figure it out without a map. I go West to work, but I often forget that (in fact I thought it was East just now, until I rethought it.)
That part of my brain is broken. I really don’t understand how anyone could just know off the top of their head which direction they are traveling.
It may be a skill, but it’s also a capacity which I clearly don’t have. I presume that part of my brain has been allocated for cephalopods or something. (I can, however, read maps just fine. I think the problem is that I don’t develop a mental map in my head when I go places, as many people seem to do.)
Agree there.
Once, in Pittsburgh, at night riding in the back of a car with a niece, my SIL was driving. She should know her way around. She was a local at least. She was totally lost. Well, that’s not fair. She said “If I can find the zoo, I can get us back”
My BIL was the navigator. Did I mention that he is mostly blind?
My niece and I looked at each other with that ‘We are so screwed’ look. And just had a nice chat.
If I have a map and it can be pointed out where we are, and where we are going, I can figure out how to get there. On this trip, neither data point was available (pre cell phones of course)
Which will come in handy, if your brain is ever transplanted into an orca.
In general, I am. Certainly when in familiar places. Was taught basic orienteering at school. It’s not that difficult.
When at some place unknown, e.g. deep in the woods, not all the time, but if I know where I came from, it shouldn’t be too difficult to get an idea of directions.
“ded reckoning” is a valid spelling alternative and attested from at least the 1930’s. Granted, the other is older, dating back to the 1600’s.
Pretty funny you point that out - I was just this weekend telling someone where to find the player’s parking lot at Progressive Field. I had written “it’s on the southeast corner.” When you roll into town on E. 9th, it really feels like Carnegie is going E-W and 9th is straight north. That’s how I picture it - the lake is straight north, isn’t it?! No, the lake is at an angle and the grid is at an angle and technically it’s all tilted. I had to correct myself and say the parking lot is squarely on the eastern corner of the diamond-shaped plot that is Progressive Field.
I always had a decent sense of direction which was honed during my time as a navigator/aerial scout. On my home turf I have most of the state stored in my head and I visualize it as a grid with all the major roads. If I travel far outside my general area it takes longer to orient myself.
I guess it depends on how you define valid. The military and FAA use the term dead reckoning. I have never seen it spelled differently until this thread and it used to be my profession.
I have a theory that in the US we have a natural disadvantage with cardinal directions because so many of the big population centers are on the “East Coast”, which is really more of a “Southeast Coast”. I mean, that coast runs from southwest to northeast. Naturally, a major share of our long distance roads either parallel the coast or run perpendicular to it. So, a major share don’t run North-South or East-West. However, nominal directions on those roads are the cardinal directions. For example, in my region, US 95 and US 40 run approximately parallel to each other, both within walking distance of my house, and we use them a great deal. However, 95 uses North or South while 40 uses East or West. These have to do with the endpoints, and not the local direction, which is reasonable enough. That said, we have to remember that 95’s version of Northeast is North but 40’s is East.
I think planned cities with clearly cardinal orientations (such as D.C.), or cities with gridlike street arrangement that was steered by a coast following a cardinal direction (such as West Palm Beach) would tend to make it easier for locals there to be aware of cardinal directions.
Certainly. And for most of the world where people live the nearest ocean is eastward or westward and maps are all oriented with North=Up, and East=Right. Others have told me about the trouble with ‘East towards the ocean’ thing in life and it’s mentioned by at least one other person in the thread.
I find the odd part how easily everything can reverse on just one axis in my head if I don’t actively think about it. I doubt I could provide directions switching left-right or east-west in my head when the ocean is to the east and I have things right.
That’s a place where the ocean isn’t that far away in any direction. Never been there but I’d think the roads would tend toward being circumferential or radiating from the center of the island instead of a grid.
It’s different on the island I live on. Like much of New England roads go in random directions and a Drunkard’s Walk is as good a way as any of traveling from one spot to another.
Pretty much always. It sorta bothers me when I don’t - but that would generally either be when indoors, or after a twisty route on an overcast day. Every once in a while I’ll be on a road/path that takes an odd direction, such that I get confused. It is one reason I prefer using paper maps over phone maps - and I HATE it when the phone map reorients such that north is not up.
One that used to mess with me regularly was when we used to vacation in western Michigan. Growing up and living in the Chicago area, the one constant was that Lake Michigan was to the east. It really seemed weird to say we were heading WEST to get to the lake. That house was on a small private lake, and both the lake and house were on an angle (as opposed to the Chicago area strict grid.) At one point I pulled out my compass and stuck up stickies to remind myself of the directions.
I am, most of the time. I am a cartography nerd myself, love maps and mostly picture my surroundings as in a map. That may be the reason why I am miffed by Barcelona’s maps, which is the only city I know of that does not orient the maps North-South, but to the coast, sort of. This is a tipical example, Barcelona maps all look more or less like this one:
North is to the right, slightly upwards, not quite at a 45° angle. And they don’t even put a cardinal rose in the legend to warn the poor tourists! No road goes left to right or north to south, and still I try to orient myself by the cardinal directions.
I can’t manage directions. On a map, sure, no problem, but in the real world, I confuse “west” and “east” a lot, and sometimes any other pair of directions. I’m perfectly capable of thinking that the direction I’m heading is BOTH east and west at the same time, or thinking that I’m heading east but north is to my left and also behind me. It is something like dyslexia for cardinal directions, I guess, but I have no idea how it works. I’ve never had any trouble with left and right.
It only ever causes problems when driving, when I have to decide whether to take the highway going east or west, or north or south. I remember taking the wrong exit along a short, familiar route in my hometown because I wanted to head south, but read “north” and forgot which one that was. I usually have to rephrase it as “towards the ocean,” “towards the mountains,” “towards Mexico,” and “towards Canada” to force myself to slow down and not screw up. Oddly, now that I live in Canada with mountains to the north of me, my rephasing still works better than the actual words.
I’m usually aware of the cardinal directions, and if makes me uneasy when I’m not.
That might have been me! I’ve lived in Albuquerque for most of my life, and our mountains are east. I grew up with people giving directions with east as a reference, so it seems natural to me, and going to Denver disorients me because they put their mountains in the wrong direction.
I don’t travel by car nearly as much as I used to, but when I did, I was always aware of where north was, and when I give directions, that’s what I refer to. One of my problems with GPS is that it gives turn-by-turn directions and I feel lost without the bigger picture.
This doesn’t mean that I’m good at navigating, however. I can’t tell right from left without thinking about it for a minute, and I often can’t find my way back from a new place without getting directions again. But I do know which direction I’m traveling!
You can deliberately spin me and confuse me by driving me somewhere blindfolded and I wouldnt know. Especially if you changed coasts.
But in general, yes, I know which direction is which.
Until last week, I’d have answered yes. I grew up in metro NY in a town that roughly paralleled Manhattan, so could always see the skyline which I took to be east, making N, S, & W easy.
When I moved to SoCal, I could always see the mountains (ie, “East”) and sense the ocean (“West”) but this assumes a N/S coast which it is not.
Last week I was trying to describe to a colleague where I sit in our building and said it was the southeast corner. I could see the 405 and I was closer to San Diego (thus, “south”) and away from the beach (“east”). But the compass on my phone told me the corner I was describing pointed almost due north.
Brains are weird.
I used to think I was a natural at it, the Atlantic O is East,N is Disney world
S is Key West and W is the Everglades.
Then I moved to Michigan and the body of water was W , used to mess me up.
My spouse has an inner compass. Take a typical N/S road but for length of a few miles it may bend this way or that, and I will assume any left or right of it will be East or west. So I’m bonkers when they say no you mean N or S of the road at that intersection.
Yeah I guess says I while my mind goes spatially blank.
Most of the country is laid out using the PLSS It’s a grid system. The east coast and Texas does not have it.
That does not mean that everything is divided out in NSEW lines, but a lot ended up being especially in flat states. This is clearly visible when you fly over, say rural Kansas. Large areas of land there are generally divided up using the PLSS. And the roads go between the different properties.
Mountains and rivers of course change everything. But even here in central Colorado mountains we have the PLSS system. Roads of course don’t and can’t follow it.