Wayfinding (2020) is a psychological assessment of what happens when we are lost – not deliberately lost, but really lost – and how people make decisions – rational and mostly irrational – in order to find their way home (wayfinding).
The author begins with how our ancestors connected with their landscape. He then discusses how we learn to explore our surroundings, how the brain processes spatial maps, and how memory aids or hampers our ability to remember where we have been in relation to where we are. He follows with examples of how people find their way when they are lost, and why many people remain lost: why they get lost, what they do (stay in one place or look for a way out), why getting lost is distressing and disorientating, and what happens next – the successes and the tragedies.
Along the way, the author explains why some children are better than adults in getting found when they are lost, the directions people take and how far, how long people stay in one place hoping to be found, and the difference in navigation techniques that we use when we are lost. He discusses the mind of people with Alzheimers and people during distress.
I liked the parts on the devastating costs to the mind when we think we are lost, and why some people who are found are so close to a major point or town but didn’t notice. Readers will learn, from all of these examples, the best strategies for wayfinding. Everyone is different and unpredictable at the time of being lost, but the author summarizes the main commonalities for failures and success.
The author also points out the reduction over generations of the distances that people explored, as children and as adults. A child’s exploration range, in which they freely roam the local neighbourhood by themselves, has declined over three generations in the United Kingdom by more than 90% in some cases. The lack of exploration therefore reduces people’s spatial skills and confidence in finding their way home.
There is also a section on the impact of restrictive environments and solitary confinement on people: ‘Panic attacks, paranoia, hypersensitivity to external stimuli, obsessional thinking, distorted perceptions, hallucinations and difficulties in thinking and memory are the norm, and full-blown psychosis adn permanent psychological damage are not uncommon.’ He discusses being lost in the wilderness and being lost in the city.
This is a fascinating book about the effects of being perpetually disorientated in the modern world and the devastating consequences of being truly lost when anxiety arises and decision-making goes haywire, resulting in a decision that could lead to life or death.
Reading this book brought to mind the time I was lost in the city where I lived for 13 years. I was hiking on unfamiliar, densely-forested hills that I had not been on before when thick fog set in and I could only see two metres around me. I couldn’t sight anything in the landscape to gain a sense of direction. There was no-one, no sound of cars, no city noise, and yet I knew I was within a few kilometres of the city. I knew I had to go downwards, but why was I going around in circles? Why were my survival training skills taking so long to kick in, and why was my sense of timing so off-kilter? Despite the brevity of wandering-lost, why was I so relieved to have found my way out? As I was reading this book, I realised why I made specific decisions, and how far I actually roamed. And how the moss, insects, crow, wallaby, and koala were not part of my plan, but part of my spontaneous change of plan that led to wayfinding myself to familiar ground.
MARTINA NICOLLS
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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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