Navigation is all about knowing where one is, and also knowing about which direction one is going. The great navigators from history such as Columbus, Drake and Cook would attest to this, as would those slightly lesser brave souls who went to the Moon and back.
There’s an old story about a British family on a driving tour of Ireland. They get lost among the vast maze of country lanes and boreens amidst which one could confuse and lose many many armies, but eventually they come across a native walking towards them along the road. They hail him over. He is a shaggy mussed up individual with a face like a potato, and hair like a bird’s nest, dawdling along.
“I say old chap, can you tell us how to get to Fallon’s Falls?” the driver asks him through his down drawn window. The stranger comes over, beaming with happiness for his newfound company in life. “Fallon’s Falls?” he asks and scratches his head. After a short passage of mentation he replies:
“Ahh to be sure now if I was going to Fallon’s Falls, I wouldn’t start from here!” were his first gnomic words.
The driver and his entourage are extremely bemused by his reply. The stranger continued:
“Stay on this road until you get to Ballymacow” he said, “but a mile before then, take a left and then a right and a right again. Fallon’s Falls is right up there!”
The tourists followed these cryptic instructions to the letter and thus beheld the beautifully cascading waters from over the high cliff, and were thence transported to the higher realm by nature’s pulchritude.
***********************************************
One of my favourite few possessions is a geologist’s compass which I bought online. Although it is a cheap knock-off of the Brunton design, it is brutally accurate. One of its greatest features is that you can adjust it for “magnetic declination”. The difference between magnetic north and true north vary depending on your position on the earth’s surface, and also over time. Here’s a website to give you the necessary correction:
http://www.magnetic-declination.com/
Here’s the point of this article: To navigate well to your destination, you need hard and fast positional and directional information (map and compass), but you also need some local’s knowledge, no matter how confusing that comes over.
The black appendage is pointing at 233 degrees from true north.
Burrito's Stable 