NORTH!

"Which way is North?"

UP!

🙂
Loyal

I understand North and can learn it locally, but somehow there's something wrong with my internal visualization of directions in the world. I blame it on the fact that the first classroom map I learned from was hanging on the west wall. I grew up with a sense of the home territory rotated with respect to the rest of the world.

To this day I have to concentrate on getting directions right when I'm where I now live and talk about where I grew up. I tend to intuitively refer to them 90 degrees off if I don't stop and check myself.

Anybody else have this problem?

Poll - directions in big stores

Do you keep yourself oriented to the outside world when you are in a big box store, or do you orient to the front and back of the store? I.e., if you are inside and somebody asks directions to somewhere else in town can you point the right direction without serious thought?

I grew up south of the big city.

So the big city was always north, except when we traveled north of the big city.

One of the biggest attractions to surveying for me was always having an excuse to carry a compass and maps. I have zero inherent sense of direction, and still routinely get lost in a town I've lived in for 15 years.

It absolutely is a learned, perishable skill for me, something akin to mental retardation in the strict sense. Low level panic sets in, and rational thought goes out the window.

My wife, on the other hand, is freakish in her ability to always know what direction she is heading, and is completely mystified at my lack of ability, has been a running joke for both of us for the 30 years we've been married.

She had a t-shirt shop make one up as a gag gift once, with our home address and telephone number on the back and 'If I look lost, I probably am. Please point me in the right direction' printed on the front.

Bill..

I can relate. I have a tendency to remember things in a 'mirror' image.

If I go somewhere by driving north, then turning left; in my mind's eye I visually remember driving south and turning right. After all these years I have compensated very well. I just have to stay on top of it.

Left handed and dyslexic...that might explain it. Oh, my desk has to face north. Otherwise I cannot write a M&B description correctly.

North is ALWAYS where you find it. That goes for which ever "north" you're looking for. Does cause me to pause and consider the reasoning of one of my mentors who insisted that the north arrow always, without exception, pointed 'up' the page on the plat parallel to all the important text on it. I've followed this example through the years. Makes things simple, not only for the layman trying to understand it but, also for all the dumbed down button pushers who have come and are yet to come.

In the field I've always looked at the plat first and then at my trusty compass and then make sure I could find some sort of agreement between the two before moving forward with the survey. I'm still subject to 'getting lost' at any given time.

In the PLSS

How about running into another Surveyor in a bar, both of us with our girlfriends, and commenting on other attractive ladies with regard to their location in the bar using aliquot terms...."hmmmm, SW1/4 of the NW 1/4 of the SE 1/4"....they never caught on.;-)

In the PLSS

> How about running into another Surveyor in a bar, both of us with our girlfriends, and commenting on other attractive ladies with regard to their location in the bar using aliquot terms...."hmmmm, SW1/4 of the NW 1/4 of the SE 1/4"....they never caught on.;-)

LOL!! 😀

Hell, even a colonial puke like me could follow those directions.

Thanks, P.L.

Thank you, P.L. I've always thought that I was the only surveyor in the world without an innate sense of direction. When I was a young chainman, I had a Party Chief who wouldn't say “left” or “right”; only “West” or “South” or whatever direction. I learned to orient myself on the ground to the plat we were working with if there was one and if he let me see it.

I think that my problem stems from being almost blind in one eye so I have no depth perception. My world is flat, no 3D. I really suck at parallel parking, too. Interestingly, though, I’ve always been excellent at aiming things. Guns, rocks, balls, etc; I can’t explain that.

Don

In the PLSS

Directions have always been very simple for me to maintain. It is rare that I am outdoors and unsure of my bearings. On the other hand, I absolute hate entire towns, shopping malls, streets and such that are whopperjawed. One high school I used to visit a couple times per year was laid out in a circle around a large gym/auditorium area. Who ever thought that was a good idea should have been shot.

I am guilty of being one of those people who enjoys taking alternate routes between the same places. So long as I generally need to go, say, westerly and northerly to get there I will get there by jogging west then north then west then north then west then north...... Makes the journey much more fun and sometimes educational.

There are a few places where I was taken as a small child that I have assigned incorrect bearings to the inside of a building. One such building was the nearest high school that now serves as a community building. Outside, I know the building runs south to north. Once inside, it rotates and runs east to west.

> ... Does cause me to pause and consider the reasoning of one of my mentors who insisted that the north arrow always, without exception, pointed 'up' the page on the plat parallel to all the important text on it. I've followed this example through the years. Makes things simple, not only for the layman trying to understand it but, also for all the dumbed down button pushers who have come and are yet to come.
>
>

Edited....

Of course, in the above statement, just to clarify, the word "parallel" should have been perpendicular! After rereading the statement, I thought, that would look weird. 😛

Anyway, happy new year to y'all and all the "norths" that await you in the days to come. 😉

Take care,
Ed

If the property is much wider north and south and you put the north arrow to the left and all text reads from the bottom or right edge of the paper then the paper can be rotated clockwise, all the text will read normal or from the left and the north arrow will be up the page.

I use a compass constantly in the field. At every set up to make sure the gun is set right (old habit) and to see what kind of local disturbances might be in the area for when I go back and flag the lines.

I set the arrow of my mental compass on the truck. So if it gets dark and I'm a half mile or a mile from the truck I can still walk back to it without getting lost. It's too easy crossing ridges and hollows to get disoriented in the field.

I kind of get a feeling in the part of my head where the truck is. Can't explain it but the compass arrow in my head always points back home.

When I am telling my guys a direction it is always from me, I don't say a cardinal direction to tell them where to go.

I think my innate sense of direction along with a sense of temporal awareness, spacial awareness, and situational awareness is what pointed me to a career in land surveying.

NORTH! (In New Jersey)

Nowth Orrow

🙂

N

I keep track of north pretty well except in SW New Hampshire where I grew up.

Mount Monadnock, which rose 2000 vertical feet above my elevation of 1100', was Southeast. The village was 3 miles Northwest and several hundred feet lower than our house. It always seemed like north should be uphill and south should be downhill, so my sense of direction in my hometown will be forever skewed.

NORTH! (In New Jersey)

😀 That's why may daughter decided to go into speech language pathology, plenty of work for her here in NJ.

Actually north in New Jersey is anything north of the Raritan River.

IF I enter a new town, and get NORTH wrong, then I forever have to fight with the wrong or first concept of north. The key for me, to getting it right, is to get it right the first time. Then it works right.

I have certain towns that the sun rises and sets in some other place, than E&W. I have been able to trace it to whether or not I got it right the first time.

That's just me. But maybe others too.

N