By Jenn New, Chevon Alderson, and Katie Gass

Orienteering is a sport that involves navigation and bearings. In this presentation we will teach you how to become effective at orienteering, with a compass, teach you how to use nature and you senses to orienteer, and show how some people have fun using orienteering.

• The red end of the needle points north.

• Make sure to keep it level (parallel with the ground)

• knives can confuse the compass needle, along with belt buckles, cameras, zippers, power lines,, and other compasses.

• There are infinite numbers of each bearing that lie parallel to one another, but only one will get you where you want to go. (hint: Measure your bearing, then look ahead and find an intermediate landmark in front of you that lies on that bearing. Walk towards this landmark, as opposed to following the direction-of-travel arrow, and you will have much better luck staying on a straight course.)

Finding Direction Without a Compass: Since we know that the sun is due south at its highest

point, we can find north, east, south, and west by using shadows. Put a stick (at least 2' tall) in the ground and mark the top of its shadow. Wait a few minutes, then mark the top of its new shadow. Keep doing this until -you have three or four different marks. A line connecting these marks will run east and west (with west being in the direction of your first mark). This works best in mid-March and mid-September because the line formed will be perfectly straight. At other times of the year the line will be slightly curved, but try your best to draw a best-fit line.

Using Your Watch to Find North and South: If you have a non-digital watch, hold it horizontally and point the hour hand towards the horizon directly beneath the sun. (If you are on daylight savings move the hour hand back one hour first). South is halfway between the hour hand and 12 o'clock. This works because the hour hand moves 30 degrees an hour, which is twice as fast as the sun.

How Much Daylight is Left?: Often times the most important quest-ons for an outdoor traveler is now much daylight is left at a particular location. To get a close estimate, extend your arm all the way out so that your thumb is up and your palm is facing towards you. Line up the bottom of your pinky finger with the horizon and then count how many finger widths are between the hororizon and the sun (you may need to use your other hand to have enough). Each finger width represents 15 minutes of daylight left.

Compasses are not the only way you can find your way around in th wilderness. People have been using different methods for centuries and have successfully explored new lands without getting lost, simply by taking advantage of all their senses. For example, the Vikings used bird migrations and the direction of the wind, sun, and waves to guide them on the seas. Polynesians used stars and a device, now called a dummy compass, to navigate. There are many techniques you can use to find your way and prevent getting lost.

On water, sounds can be used as landmarks. If you are boating in a familiar area and the coast isn’t visible you can use these landmarks to your advantage. You may know that there is a foghorn right before a noisy field of sheep and your dock is right after the field of sheep. You can use the foghorn and the sheep sounds as landmarks so you know when to turn into shore.

Land can be smelled from many miles out at sea. Different parts of the world have different odors. The Polynesians used pigs, which have a very sensitive sense of smell, to smell land. As soon as they caugiht an odor they would get excited, telling the people that land was near. Some smells are very pungent and can be smelled a far into the ocean. Fresh cut grass and bird colonies are two examples. One man smelled the cut grass of New Zealand 80 miles offshore. Generally you can smell things closer to the ground because the particles sink, Smell is good for telling you that there is land ahead.

Wind-

Every area in the world has a particular wind pattern and a dominant wind during each season. if you know what it is you can use that information in finding directions. Birds and insects build their nests protected from the dominant wind and using that information you can figure out where north and south are. You can also use trees if they are in an exposed area, they may appear windswept telling you the direction of the dominant wind.

Ant Hills-

In the colder regions of the Northern Hemisphere anthills are built so they will get the maximum amount of sun in the winter. Facing southeast they can soak up the morning rays to get revived from the cold night. You can tell what direction they are facing because the main hill will face southeast.

Each type of sea bird can tell you something different. Some types will only fly two miles from shore and you can tell that you are close to land if you see them, while others live on the ocean all year.

The moon, sun and stars can tell you direction and time.

Different areas have different wave patterns. If you know these you can tell directions even if it is windy because swells generally travel in the same direction.

If yu are cutting, a path through the woods, there is a proficient way to mark your trail to enable you to find your way back. Using a sharp object put one slash on a tree trunk facing the way you came from, and two slashes on the other side facing the way you are heading. The two slashes will be visible when you are coming in the other direction.

Using an average 30-inch pace you will walk approximately 3 miles per hour. If this is your pace you can use this to approximate how far you have gone in a certain amount of time. If you want to estimate how far away something is, there are some basic rules.

• At 50 yards you can distinguish the mouth and eyes on a person

• 100 yards eyes are dots

• 200 yards general details of clothes can be distinguished

• 300 yards faces can be seen

• 500 yards the color of clothes can be distinguished

• 800 yards a man looks like a post

• I mile large tree trunks can be seen

An inventive form of orienteering, letterboxing combines fan and skill. Letterboxing is a mysterious past time that began in 1854 with a man, a calling card, a bottle, and a riverbank. He was a young Victorian gentleman, out strolling on the English countryside known as Dartmoor and he stuck his calling card in a bottle and placed the bottle on the riverbank. Eventually, other walkers who found the bottle began to leave their cards too, and sometimes they left a postcard so that the next person who found the bottle could send the earlier visitor a note. This early form of modern day letterboxing was modified and named. Known as a letterbox, there is a small plastic container that holds a rubber stamp, a guest book, and often an ink-pad. Those who find the box use their own personal stamps, known as "personals," to stamp their place in the visitor's book. This is especially meaningful when a rare letterbox is found. Then, to doubly prove their conquer, the letterboxers use the stamp from the box to stamp their passport before packing it all up, replacing it and moving on. The most curious part about letterboxing is, the hunters need clues to find the boxes. The clues can be obtained through a catalog; however, these clues are only to the most common and least prestigious letterboxes. In order to get the clues to the more challenging boxes you have to have connections. There is a strict etiquette enforced in letterboxing: you never ask for someone else's clues. You can offer your clues, but only if you've been in the letterboxing community long enough so that your clues will be accepted. This makes it hard for newcomers. Die-hard letterboxers come from all parts of England, in some cases the world, to hunt on Dartmoor for the thousands of letterboxes awaiting them there.

Letterboxing isn't as easy as it sounds, the clues can be fairly vague. For example, an easy clue reads:

"Reynard's Happy Hour. Bellever 341 degrees. Hay Tor 51 degrees. Track disappears over hill 101 degrees. Under large rock half covered with heather."

Of course, minus the local reference and the foreign "Tor" (British for "hill"), the exact bearings and an unmistakable landmark are given. However, the clues for the more sought-after boxes are more of a challenge:

"Dartmoor's lost unicorns No. 5-Hero, 5377, 8473, Have Feet Will Travel, FP '05 degrees. Cross 18 1/2 degrees. Large chimney on farm 241 degrees. Tip of dead tree 15 1/12 degrees. Tip of pointed rock 70 degrees and 9p away. Under rock on edge of clitter."

Clues like these require knowledge of the area, and some common sense of the outdoors, "Dartmoor s Lost unicorns No.5-Hero" is the name of the stamp you are looking for. "Have Feet Will Travel" is the code name of the maker of the letterbox. If you happen to be camping a map, the two four-digit numbers are map-grid references. FP stands for flagpole. Once the bearings are deciphered, line up all the clues until you can see the described thing, in this case a clitter, or clump of rocks. Then you have essentially located the box. The hard thing about clues is that they aren't easy to obtain and there is no set form for writing them, so the authors can throw in all kinds of codes to throw off the less-worthy.

All of these actions help to keep letterboxing a quiet and enjoyable combination of orienteering and safe outdoor fun on the Dartmoor countryside. This is how the native letterboxers want to keep it. However, to their dismay, the interest in this hobby is growing and more and more people arrive in England each day in search of "just one more box".

Lesson Objective:

• We will have the students work in small groups to come up with their own orienteering courses that will lead to predetermined destinations.

• The groups will then swap papers and test out each other's courses to see if they are easy to follow and accurate.

• Our project will culminate with a large-scale orienteering course (set up by us while the other students are designing and testing their own courses). The group will navigate this course together and must obtain stamps from each of the letterboxes along the way. The final destination will be China Caves, where another aroup will be ready to begin their presentation.