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• Solo Travel Gets An Unfair Rap
• Make Room For The Solo Travelers
• The Myth Of The Defenseless Woman
• No Terrorist Is Going To Stop My Travel Plans
• Getting in and out of the Wilds of West Hartford

Home :: Solo Travel Articles :: Getting in and out of the Wilds of West Hartford

I told my friend Ron that Northeast asked me to orienteer and then write about my experience. The telephone receiver swelled with silence and then, a guffaw hurled from Ron's spleen. "You?" he asked, followed by an unsolicited crash course in reading the sun's position.

Reacting to my latest assignment, my friend Sharon slapped a palm across her mouth to keep from sputtering Merlot all over our restaurant dinner table. "Do they know?" she queried.

Yes, my editors know that I'm directionally challenged.

Sharon had accompanied me on an errand to Providence last fall. I enjoyed the companionship, but her presence fulfilled a higher calling: revent me from getting lost.

Signage notwithstanding, transporting myself from point A to unfamiliar point B, often results in a pitiful display of disorientation from an otherwise competent woman.

"But, you're from Manhattan!" one editor needles. "That's a jungle."

A jungle on a grid with street signs, I remind her.

"For crying out loud, you went around the world," another editor goads.

True. But airline pilots navigated while I sipped bloody mary mix.

Put me on the subway, blindfold me, spin me three times, and without breaking a nail, I'll get you from South Ferry to the Bronx faster than you can say, "Yankee Stadium." But turn me loose in the woods with something called a "topo" map and a compass, and you've got Jack London kind of trouble.

Called the "thinking sport," "cunning running" or "hiking with a purpose," orienteering originated in Sweden near the turn of the 20th century as a military exercise and was introduced in the United States during the 1960s. The purpose: navigate across unfamiliar terrain using a topographic map and a compass to find sequential checkpoints or "controls" along a course, and return to the finish in the shortest elapsed time. Each control marker is located on a distinct feature, such as a stream, junction or the top of a knoll. The route between controls is not specified and is entirely up to the orienteer.

Angst-ridden, I arrive at the New England Orienteering Club (NEOC) registration table at West Hartford Reservoir on a Saturday just before 10 a.m.

Formed in 1972, NEOC is one of 70 clubs chartered by the U.S. Orienteering Federation, holds 35 to 40 meets a year in forests and parks across New England, and the Connecticut Chapter hosts events in the central and eastern parts of the state.

I introduce myself as a newbie to Mark, a Cub Scout leader and NEOC volunteer for three years. Of the three courses offered at this introductory event - white, yellow, orange - I choose the white beginner course: 2.2 kilometers, 10 controls. The intermediate orange course has 24.

My mini "O" training begins with a detailed, legal-sized, 5-color map. "O" maps show boulders, cliffs, ditches and fences, in addition to elevation, vegetation and trails. Except for the blue amoeba-like shapes labeled "Reservoirs 2, 3 and 5," nothing looks familiar. The controls are circled and numbered indicating the order in which they are to be visited. This is a sample map. The $3 map I will buy doesn't show my course controls. I have to mark those myself. This, I'm told, is part of the fun.

Next, the compass. Rentable for 50 cents, it is an elegant, clear acrylic job with black lines that I'm to match to those on the map to identify magnetic north.

Pointing to the red end of the compass needle quivering between two parallel black dashes, Mark instructs me to "Put Fred in the shed." So far, so good. Then, he lines up two control points on a sample route on a map, spins the circular face of the compass while holding its base steady, turns around, points to a group of red arrows opposite "Fred," looks at me and chimes, "Follows red."

Huh uh.

Mark staples a control description or clue sheet to the back of my map so I needn't rely solely on symbols and does the same for the other white course orienteers. My sheet charts each control by its three-digit flag number, description, location, like "southeast side," and topographical symbol. A boulder cluster, for example, is a black triangle; a mini comb, teeth down, represents cliffs.

A yellow control card is also stapled to my map. At each control, I'm to punch the corresponding number on the card to verify my arrival. Each punch creates a different pattern of holes so you can't fake a control stop.

Up the road, I find the official event start where another NEOC volunteer clocks me in. He says, "Go," I kneel over a master map to copy my controls and then, I'm off.

I turn the map so that it mirrors my direction. Six steps into the course and still on tarmac, I decide I'm headed the wrong way. Hmm…the location of the first control seems to require a sharper left than I've taken. So, I back track only to face a pipe system. That's not right. I'm making this harder than it needs to be. But I don't trust my instincts in the woods. And I have no familiar point of reference to ground me like, say, the Chrysler building.

Except - duh - my map.

I've only glanced at it. I haven't studied it to chart my route. So, I stop, breathe, and get serious about the task at hand. OK, back to the blacktop and into the woods.

The first orange and white control flag bobs in the breeze, about 50 feet ahead and trail-side on the right. I pick up the dangling punch from the orange and white flag and mark my first box.

Piece of cake.

Ahead of me I notice another orienteer - I try not to look where he's going but hey, we're not playing for cash or anything - so I hang a right behind him up a woodsier trail. On my left at the next junction on the south side of a boulder flaps the second control, number 422.

Almost disappointed by the modicum of challenge, I think I should have chosen the yellow trail.

I confirm my southerly direction on the map and identify the next control as west or a right turn into "stony ground, boulder field." Yep, feels right as I step along a canopied trail full of them.

Hey, where's my guy? The orienteer I had followed, er, seen, has disappeared. Others silently materialize like gnomes from tree trunks, all facing different directions.

Standing still, I peer through the brush attempting to spot a flash of orange beckoning me to the third control. Nothing. All right, I have to do this for real. So far, my rented compass has been dangling from my wrist like New Wave jewelry. Now, I place it over my map, line up my route, put Fred in the shed and then…oh, never mind.

I'm tempted to walk up the hill toward the group in front of me. But I don't know if they're on a different course or off course. The compass thing is not working for me. I need a remedial class, and it needs to be more than five minutes long. My watch says I've been out a half hour and I've barely moved. The "O" tools now left in my bag are common sense and some serious map reading.

At the south end of a "stone wall, ruined," lies the third control identified on my map by a broken line with dots. After testing a few hypotheses - up the hill, down the hill, back track, bushwhack - during which I pass several ruined stone walls, I notice that my target wall runs north-south. I'm walking west but consider that the wall might extend north far enough for me to meet it perpendicularly and then follow to its south end.

I wander into "open land with scattered trees."

So much for that hypothesis.

Back again at the second control, I orient myself and instead of making a sharp right, head dead south through the trees.

Before leaving the trail, I meet Carol, a 56-year-old orienteer of 13 years with the Rochester Orienteering Club who is visiting with family from Simsbury. She offers assistance. Yes, I do need help, I tell her, fresh out of that "no challenge" smirk I was sporting at control flag 422. But I'm engaged in an existential exercise and have to go it alone.

Into my second hour, I reach the third control marked by flag 423. I emerge from the woods dazed, a mere shell of the woman I was at the start only to see Carol and company strolling toward the control marker along a dirt trail.

Mercifully, controls four through seven sit trailside with an occasional dip into a "gully" or "dry ditch." I relax a bit, using the breather to correlate the map to my surroundings, trying to feel less handicapped. I look at my compass wistfully, vowing to learn how to use it in the near future.

My lifelong challenge with orienting myself in nature disturbs me. Not because I demand from myself infallibility but because I lack what I believe is a survival skill. I suspect it originates in a place beyond that part of the brain governing direction. It feels rooted in fear of loss of control and isolation, incapacitating whatever logic, experience and instinct I usually draw from to solve problems. The course becomes convoluted again en route to the eighth control, but I meet Cary. The manager of Eastern Mountain Sports in West Hartford, Cary cross-country skis and kayaks, but he is a first-time orienteer. For a newbie, he's traveling at a nice clip so I hitch a ride to the finish because I've had enough. Being turned around in the woods for more than 45 minutes has left me feeling vulnerable, raw. It's not often in life that I'm rescued. And so, I ride the wave.

OK, so I didn't follow the experiment to conclusion.

I can live with that.

Besides, the event had a three-hour cut-off. Cary came in at 52 minutes. The white course group times ranged from 45 to 82. My time: 123 minutes. No surprises here. I know my limits. And I've just signed up for a class in orienteering to learn how to surpass them.

Earlier in the week I tell Ron that I'll orienteer at West Hartford Reservoir. "Oh, the yuppie woods," he says dismissively. "You can't get lost there."