I cannot navigate by right and left, they change depending on which way you are facing. Have messed this up more times than I want to admit on one way roads. Also can’t read maps unless I stand facing north. The cell phone orienting the map so that the way I am facing is up on the screen has been life changing for me.
East, West, North and South, they stay put while I move around in them. Left and Right I can do but have to think about it. Every dance instructor or yoga teacher I’ve had had given up and started giving directions like “toward the mirror”, “toward the door”, “toward the street”.
My ongoing updates to my location description for UberEats delivery drivers.
Me: “I live in the westmost apartment building.”
Driver: ?
Me: “I live in the apartment building farthest away from Portland”
Driver: ?
Me: “Head toward the sun until you get to the last building. That’s mine.”
Driver on cloudy day: ?
Me: “Imagine you get an amber alert that Mt. Hood has begun erupting. Which way do you run? Head that way. I will be waving my arms in the air outside my apartment.”
But then you realize their north is not the same as physical north, like Montreal, where west/east follows the river instead or real cardinal points.
So if you ask directions in Montreal and someone tells you to go north, it means to go NW. And if you’re told to go east, you have to NE. It’s easy once in the city because the grid follows that “convention” but you always have to be aware of that detail. We just like to add a layer of complexity.
One quirk of common Montreal parlance is that directions (north, south, east, and west) along the street grid are sharply skewed relative to the actual compass directions. The St. Lawrence River is taken as flowing west to east (even though it flows north or northeast past the island), so that directions along streets parallel to the river are referred to as “west” and “east,” and those along streets perpendicular to the river, “north” and “south.” In much of Montreal, “north” is actually northwest, and in some areas such as Verdun and Pointe-aux-Trembles it is actually due west.
Presumably, you know which way the sun comes up and goes down, so you really should know which way the cardinal directions are. You have an excuse if it’s night and you’re in an unfamiliar place.
That’s pretty much how they navigate in Ulaanbataar, Mongolia. There are technically streets and building numbers… somewhere in the utility bills. But people instead use logos on buildings to navigate, which are abundant and prominent because who wouldn’t want an entire street be referred by their brand name.
Ok, I was fully prepared to believe that the Dog and Duck, and Swan and Tomato were real pubs… Then I got to that last one, and I don’t think even British humor would square with that last one.
If you can’t take the time to memorize the 4 cardinal directions that have been the basis for navigation for thousands of years, then idk what to tell you.
Memorisation isn’t the issue. I know their names and their relation to each other.
But unlike some birds I don’t simply see where North is.
I can make a rough estimate based on the position of the sun, if conditions allow.
But if I’m in the subway tunnels or just emerged I might as well spin in a circle and appoint a random direction North. It’s certainly not an intuition as it seems to be for some people.
Can’t you kind of internally map what you know with where you are? You said subway, so I’m thinking NYC. So let’s say you get out at the Financial district. You know the Hudsen River runs north and south and is West of Brooklyn, so you can put the river on your left and establish that you’re facing North. If you can’t see the river, maybe you can see the One World Observatory, and you know that it’s near the river. I can kind of just feel that the river is over there. From there it should be fairly intuitive to retain north as you move around the city. I seem to do all of this at a subconscious level, so maybe it’s like you said and it’s intuitive for some people and others. But once I can establish one direction, I can retain my internal map and compass as I move around.
If I’m asking directions I’m probably not somewhere where I have a good sense of what’s north based on local knowledge. Yeah, I can probably find North here in my home town… But I wouldn’t know any of that about New York.
I navigate using cardinal directions but don’t think I have an internal compass. Had a friend who literally did. You could blindfold her, spin her around a bunch of times then say point north and she could. I live now on a diagonal street, for the first time, and it’s honestly difficult for my mind. It took a stupid long time for me to accept that the CORNERS pointed north, south, east and west.
It's pretty easy to figure out which way is which and using cardinal directions can result in less ambiguous/confusing instructions, I think more people should use them.
I intentionally have north is always up on my map app. It is easier to recognize cardinal directions while doing terrain association, and it makes passengers upset.
I clued into this many years ago and my sense of direction has been massively upgraded ever since. I always have a mental image of the Google Maps (facing North) of a place, even when I’m visiting a new place. As a result, it is much faster for me to plot new places in my mental map. Definitely a skill worth developing!
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