Food is magic

The father figure is reading a book called Deep Survival. It's about epic saves and how brain chemistry makes you dumb. I like the parts about internal maps and remembering the future- how you try to convince yourself that what you observe is wrong, and what you believe is right. I've spent the last few years making a list of thoughts that serve as warning flags. (I've believed all of them at some point in time.)

The creek is dry right now.
This road was put in after the map was made.
The river bed changed shape.
My compass delineation is off.
The hill eroded.
I am on an entirely different road system, five miles away.
I have managed to walk seven miles without noticing.
The crummy (vehicle) has been stolen.
The poles have switched alignment- magnetic north is now south.
The GPS is wrong.
I've been transported to fairyland by malicious sprites.

I got lost at work a couple weeks ago. You know how it is. You know where you were, you know you haven't walked over that river to the south, but there's about four miles where you could be, you're tired, and everything you've seen in the last fifteen minutes does not match where you want the map to say you are. I stared at the map for a while, folded it up, and continued to walk in the wrong direction. Then a switch flipped deep in my brain. I dug out some vest snacks (pocket jerky! smashed crackers!) and stuffed them into my mouth. They revealed to me that I was not transported. I turned around and walked the other way. Let me re-emphasize that: after walking two miles out of my way at the end of a very long day, I turned around without a landmark offering proof positive that I was lost and backtracked. Food is magic.

Psssht, you non-outdoors people are thinking. That's not hard. But it is terribly difficult- having your rational brain clamp down on your screaming instincts and native desire to be lazy. "No no" whisper your legs, "The crummy's just around the bend." It isn't. You're lost. This is the hardest thing to communicate when training new field people. The road did not change shape. The compass is right. AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, DON'T DOUBT THE GPS. Doubting the GPS is doubting the theory of relativity. Doubting the GPS is doubting geometry. I may not be certain of many things in life, but I know my location relative to four satilites.

If only I could teach them to skip right to faerie. That one's actually pretty useful as a transient meme.

Apologies to Brenny, who was dozing in the backseat of the third car in a caravan, and still managed to guide us out of the slums of Ensenada without a false step.