We left the house around 3 am, plugged the first address we needed into the GPS, chose the quickest route, and hit go. In getting to Saint Louis, the GPS said stay to the right. The sign on I-70 said to take the left lane.
I trusted the GPS and found myself crossing the Mississippi River on a bridge that the GPS said was not there.
Did I forget to mention that the GPS in the dash of the car and has not been updated since we bought car 4 years ago?
The next thing I know we are in downtown St Louis. At this point, the GPS figures out where we are and starts giving accurate directions to get us to US 44 West.
I am one of those people that just know directions. Everywhere I’ve been, I know where north, east, south and west are. Even in Nome Alaska, my “bump” of direction was not bothered. Okay to be fair, the Bering Sea gave a hint to which direction was south. To know one direction, is to know all.
When I was going through Air Base Ground Defense School at Camp Bullis, outside of San Antonio, TX I drove a Bootstrap Butter Bar nuts on the Compass Course. We spent several days learning how to read a topo map and applying compass readings to get from point A to point B.
When I attended this school, I was a young E-4, which at the time was the rank of Sargent. Most of the enlisted in this school were fresh out of the Security Police School and ranged from no strips to two. Command was made up of the ranking students. So, I found myself living in the Command Tent with a brand new Commissioned Officers. My Commander was a Bootstrap Butter Bar, who started out Enlisted and as an E-6 completed his degree and earned his Commission with 16 years of service.
An instructor told a story of a guy getting separated from his hunting friends on a hunting preserve. The guy wondered around and found a ranch house. But he couldn’t tell them the name of the hunting preserve, so the ranch owner had to call the Sheriff.
Buy this time, the lost hunter had been reported missing, and people were looking for him. In getting “lost” he climbed the preserve fence, crossed three roads, a creek, a river, and a set of railroad tracks.
Okay, this guy should not be allowed to his own house without a guide.
I started to think 2 Lt Harris was lost hunter.
Once we left the classroom and had to find locations out in the woods, things got sticky. 2 Lt Harris could get lost in 20 x 20-foot room with, if we had such in 1976, GPS. Worse yet, the fact I knew where we were and where we needed to go, angered him to no end. In the end a Captain stepped in and read him the riot act, pointing out that my lifetime of hiking this type of terrain, trumped his 16 years of service and rank.
Let me state here and now, the area in Texas where Camp Bullis is located is hilly and a lot like the area I grew up in Southern California. I felt at home and compass or no compass, day or night, I always knew where I was and how to get back to Whisky Base.
Not long after Sandi and I got married, we were driving in the Motherload Country of California. In Placerville, due to construction we ended up back on SR-49 but, going back the way we came. It took me less than a quarter mile to know what happened. Sandi thought I was nuts. “How do you know?” she asked.
“Well, for one thing the sun is on the wrong side of the truck,” I replied.
“Wait, the road is all in shade, canopied over. You can’t see sky let alone the sun.”
“I can feel it, and it is on the wrong side.”
The look I got let me know she thought I was ready for the rubber room.”
“Look,” I continued, “there is a sign up there, and it is going to say the next town, is the town we just came from.”
Guess what the sign said? I don’t know how I do it, I just do. And this ability drives people who can’t, nuts.
But what happens if your GPS is out of date or the battery dies, or the entire unit gives up the ghost? Can you find your way home? Keep in mind maps are not as common as they once were, and not as detailed either.
Today we have an entire generation that has never had to pull out a real physical hold in your hand map, unfold it, find where they are, where they want to go, and work out how to get there.
Okay, backpackers, well, some of us, can map out a hike for as far as needed, but with solar panels as small as Smart Phones, even the backpackers are making the move to GPS and away from real maps.
Basic navigation is becoming a lost skill, even among those of us that learned it as children. I’ll bet at least 95% the readers of this, do not have a physical map in any auto they own. God help you if your GPS dies.