[atwood22]

If you’re lost in the woods you’re not orienteering. You’ll know your general location and you can see things on the maps like rivers relative to where you think you are. “If I walk west from here, I’ll hit a river and then I can follow that river to town.” It’s not that complicated unless you’re hopelessly lost.

[Enginerrrd]

Yeah I think that is the big conceptual failure of beginners: inability to scale their perception, and "think big" when navigating.

You can still get a little lost if you happen to find a road that's not on the map on your way to the road that is or something of the sort, but usually it's pretty obvious.

[DoingIsLearning]

> inability to scale their perception, and "think big" when navigating.

This indeed, when navigating a city I always found that I understood 'distances'.

When navigating in nature I tend to really overestimate how much ground I have covered. You are usually moving at snail speed on the typical scale of a topo map.

Getting some intuition on distance covered per unit of time is in my view the missing skill to have when orientering. You need to have a good estimate of casual hike velocity and fast hike velocity to better not underestimate distances.