Four children in Colombia were lost in the jungle for weeks after a plane crash – and managed to survive. Survival expert Heiko Gärtner explains that there are three central questions when orienting oneself in the wild: “Where am I?” “Where do I want to go?” and “How do I do that?”
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With technical aids such as mobile phones, maps, compasses, navigation systems and GPS devices, it is no problem at all to find your way around. In exceptional situations, however, it can happen that you don’t carry anything of the sort with you. Survival expert Heiko Gärtner explains how they can find their way around without any technical frills. He has summarized seven helpful tips:
Survival expert reveals tricks you need to know in the forest
It may sound banal, but nothing is actually as important when it comes to orientation as your own attention. The more precisely you perceive your surroundings, the more prominent points you will notice, which will help you in many ways. The most common problem that arises in connection with orientation is that we simply get lost. We go for a while and then have no idea where we came from in the first place. This only happens because we are not really aware of our surroundings. We don’t remember what we’re passing, so we can’t recognize it. So the more attentively we observe everything that exists around us, the easier it is for us to recognize the path on which we came.
1. Orientation in the wilderness – your own attention
However, keep in mind that you will come from the other direction on the way back. So it’s important to keep looking back and see what the streets, trees, and buildings look like from the other direction. Orientation in the forest is ultimately no different than in the city. The only difficulty is that, to our superficial view, trees resemble each other much more than houses and roads. We have the feeling that everything looks the same anyway and so our mind usually no longer tries to remember the way. Here it is once again particularly important to be on the move with open senses.
Always try to perceive as much as possible, not only with the eyes, but also with the nose, the ears and the feet. The more information about your surroundings comes into your consciousness, the easier it will be for you to remember the way home later.
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Heiko Gärtner is a wilderness mentor, journalist, tracker, world traveler, adventurer, researcher, earth healer and is one of the best-known and most extreme survival experts in Germany. He asks how we become locals in nature again can. Among other things, he also advises various TV stations on the subject.
2. Classic for orientation: knitting a song line
A method that has been tried and tested for thousands of years to remember your way back is to knit a song line. To do this, you keep selecting prominent points while walking – especially when you change direction – and build them into a story that is as lively as possible.
In the beginning it is helpful to say the story out loud in order to build up a more intensive connection to it.
What is particularly important, however, is that it evokes images, colors and feelings that are as intense as possible in one, as it sticks in the head particularly well.
If you now make your way back, you go through the individual stations of the story in reverse order and thus lead back to your starting point. However, this method has the disadvantage that if you have not practiced it, you have to concentrate very much on the story and the path and therefore have little opportunity to perceive the area to the right and left of it.
3. Set markers – with branches or stones
If you are in an area where there are too few conspicuous landmarks, you can also mark your way at regular intervals. This works best with branches or rocks that you arrange in unusual formations or in places where they don’t occur naturally. Depending on where and how you are traveling, you have to weigh up whether it is more helpful in the current situation to lay a trail that is as conspicuous as possible, which can then also be followed by everyone else, or rather one that can only be recognized if you know it’s there. The latter, of course, carries the risk that you overlook it yourself.
4. Landmarks – the main means of orientation
Landmarks are special features and typical circumstances that make up a landscape and that are easy to recognize. These include mountain ridges, rivers, forest edges, gorges and, of course, paths and roads in our forests. In some areas, such as the Apalachian Mountains of Virginia, the mountains are relatively straight and parallel (in this case southwest to northeast). Once you have determined the direction of travel, you automatically know in which direction you are walking, for example if you are following a valley.
Once you realize this, you can move about the terrain relatively freely, knowing that if, for example, you walk with the ridge always to your right, you will get back to camp.
Only when crossing the mountain does it become important to look for new landmarks that can lead you back to the starting point. Rivers are also particularly good orientation aids, as they not only provide you with a long-term reference point, but also indicate the direction in which you have to go due to the direction of flow.
If you’re lost in the wilderness and are trying to find your way back to civilization, a river can also be of great service to you. People have always preferred to settle near the water, so sooner or later you will almost always come across a place or a city if you follow a river down. The only exception to this are desert areas, where rivers tend to run in sand or dry up.
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In order to find a city here, you walk in the opposite direction, i.e. towards the source, where there is a high probability that there is an oasis that is usually visited or inhabited by people. However, it is important to realize that you will not be the only one who chooses rivers as a guide. Depending on which part of the world you are in, it can be quite risky to walk right next to the river.
In Canada, Russia and other bear regions, this is where you have the best chance of encountering one of the furry giants.
5. Acoustic signs – use your ears!
If your eyes aren’t helping you, for example because you’re standing in a dense forest where everything looks the same, then use your ears. Stop for a moment and pay attention to distinctive noises such as water rushing, street noise and the like. If you want to find your way back to a city, there is usually a whole range of sounds that tell you whether you are getting closer and in which direction you have to move on.
However, it is important that you listen very carefully and closely, because the rustling of the wind in the leaves of the trees, the rustling of the water in a river or on a coast and the rustling of passing cars on a freeway often sound very similar from afar that it is easy to be misled.
6. Distinctive Waypoints: Knowing when to turn
Being able to orient yourself is basically not much different than getting to know your surroundings. And this is easiest if you pay attention to special features, abnormalities and striking points. This includes trees that have grown noticeably, special rocks, thick stones and any other unusual natural phenomena that you can spot.
You can either build them into your songline or remember them as important waypoints. A river or ridge as a guide is good and important, but if you haven’t set up camp right next to them, then you need something to tell you when to turn and in which direction.
7. Cardinal directions: Orientation with the help of the sun
The sun has been used since the earliest human history to orientate oneself using the cardinal points. As long as we are in the northern hemisphere, the sun moves from east to south to west once a day. Accordingly, in the southern hemisphere, it migrates north. It follows very clear laws that we can easily use for orientation.
A very old and effective method for this can be easily implemented with a long stick that is stuck vertically into the ground. Now mark the end of the shadow with a stone or something similar and wait until the shadow has moved a fair distance. The longer you wait, the more accurate the determination will be. The minimum for it to work is a quarter of an hour. When you’re ready, also mark the new end of the shadow with a rock and connect both marks with a line or straight stick. This line now runs roughly in an east-west direction, with the first marker pointing west and the second pointing east.
8th. Orientation using the Clock
A more modern method is to determine the cardinal direction using the sun and a clock. The only important thing is that you always have to use the “real” time as a guide. So in summer you have to subtract one hour from the time shown on a clock. If you only have a digital clock with you, you can also make an improvised analogue clock using paper and pencil by drawing a clock face and entering the 12:00 mark and the hour hand at the current time. The technology is more accurate the further away you are from the equator.
To do this, hold your watch horizontally and point the hour hand squarely at the sun. To be even more precise, you can also align it using the shadow cast by a straight object. Now imagine a line that bisects the angle between the hour hand and the 12 o’clock mark exactly in half. This imaginary line points south in the northern hemisphere.
An exception is the time before 06:00 and after 18:00. Here the imaginary line points north – assuming you can already see the sun at this time. In the southern hemisphere, on the other hand, the 12 o’clock mark is aimed at the sun and the angle bisected to the hour hand. The resulting imaginary line points north (between 06:00 and 18:00).