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Perhaps the two chief obstacles to route-finding progress for the layman have been the tendency to endow man with a special sense of direction he does not possess and to regard the subject of route finding as beyond the scope of the rank and file. We might do well to dispel both of these notions and try to identify some other common delusions.

Basically, we need to recognize that man cannot walk in a straight line or otherwise maintain a directional course without relying on some tangible clue wholly apart from his own instincts. The clue can be the sun, moon, or stars; a prevailing wind; an oriented, distant sound, such as a waterfall; a perceptible, changing elevation, general rather than local; a bearing determined by a compass or other instrument; and a variety of additional natural or instrumental clues--but never, we may be sure, an "inborn faculty of orientation." In route finding especially, man is not an island unto himself but must depend on a geographical or some other orientating relationship to find his way.

Man's so-called (unfounded) "innate sense of direction" has now been tested quite extensively. One of many rather significant tests was made by a prairie state university on a day selected because there was no wind for a possible, influencing, directional guide -also, a heavily overcast day to avoid any guiding directional heat from the sun. A large, white, cloth target was placed on the horizon. After facing the target for orientation, the participants, blindfolded and with soundproof headgear, were asked to walk what they felt was a straight line to the target. All pursued a circuitous course. A similar tendency to circle took place when, blindfolded, the participants were asked to drive a jeep to the target. Even when blindfolded drivers were directed over a straight line by companion passengers with open vision, drivers felt a continual, compulsive urge to pursue the circuitous course as the logical one. In subsequent tests, blindfolded operators of watercraft and those on horseback also felt this same strange compulsion to veer from the course.

Tests resulting in failure to keep a direct course often brought indignation and in some instances even violent, reactionary, and unreasoned protests from the participants. Thus, man's pet delusions and his willful thinking, we may be sure, are torn from him only with much displeasure-an important determining factor we can well afford seriously to consider in our entire route-finding program as it applies both to ourselves and to others. Since we so often discover positive and valuable information from negative results, it would seem that we might do well to suppress our fictional fancies -- especially the perversity we tend to nurture about our "sense of direction" - if we are to accept the apparent, inevitable truths which apply to route finding. If we can evaluate the importance of accumulated knowledge and perception against the common "innate-directional-sense" fallacy, our route-finding program will find a much clearer horizon . . . .