IIRC it's not unusual for people who get lost in the wilderness to have ultimately only been a couple of miles away from a road in any given direction. Evidently humans are bad at walking in straight lines
I briefly got lost in a blizzard in the mountains and definitely made a circle thinking I was going in roughly a straight line. On a clear day it would be a lot easier to pick a landmark as an anchor though.
Dude... hazy blizzard and heavy low cover, like laurel in the appalachians? Honestly scary. You can see 6 ish feet ahead of you, and your footsteps disappear after the last 2 thanks to all the snow. The laurel shakes enough as you move to clear everything around you but only for a moment. You could point in any direction and claim with equal evidence that that's where you were a minute ago.
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u/geniasis 5d ago
IIRC it's not unusual for people who get lost in the wilderness to have ultimately only been a couple of miles away from a road in any given direction. Evidently humans are bad at walking in straight lines