The cold and silence of a New England winter forest is broken by the voices of a man and his two excited children. They pick their way along a meandering brook, pausing regularly to sweep aside branches or peer at compass and map. Near by, an elderly couple stride purposefully down a Jeep trail, jauntily swinging their arms and breathing deeply the crisp, fine air. Suddenly, a sweatsuit-clad figure crashes through the underbrush into a clearing. Panting from a hard run, mud dripping from his shoes, face scratched by brambles, he stares wildly about, then plunges into the thick brush once more. Despite their different styles, all of the people making their way through the forest area near Boston are participating in the sport of orienteering−speed hiking over a prescribed course in unfamiliar terrain, using only a compass and a map to navigate.
Orienteering is a survival skill with military origins. It made the transfer to civilian sport shortly after World War I when a former Swedish army officer set up orienteering programs for schoolchildren. Students who had balked at conventional fitness programs poured into the forests to race from checkpoint to checkpoint, studying maps, steadying compasses and racing against the orienteer’s chief adversary, the clock.
Easy Trails. The program is now mandatory in Scandinavian public schools. As part of the increasing interest in outdoor recreation, orienteering has spread to other European countries and the U.S. This past July, a five-day competition in Sweden drew 16,000 contestants from some 25 countries.
An orienteering meet most closely resembles an automobile rally−without the cars. In a typical contest, organizers lay out several courses, ranging from a mile-long hike over easy trails to six-mile scrambles across streams, swamps and hills. Contestants, either alone or in teams, leave the starting point at fixed intervals, moving through the quiet beauty of the forest toward unseen checkpoints marked by map coordinates. For many, it is just a “hike with a purpose,” an opportunity to stroll or picnic. For others, it is a madcap race in which speed afoot is as important as accuracy of map reading. A fast runner might plot a lengthier indirect course over clear ground, whereas a canny, perhaps flabbier orienteer might take the shorter, riskier route of a direct bearing.
“The trick,” says a top American orienteer, Peter Gagarin, “is to balance between speed and accuracy. You can be a terrifically fast runner, but that’s no good at all if you can’t find the checkpoints.” Indeed, a small error in compass reading can land an orienteer dozens of yards away from−and make him unable to spot−a plastic punch dangling from a tree. Each punch makes a distinctive perforation in the hiker’s punch card, indicating that he reached a particular checkpoint.
TIME Correspondent David Wood teamed with Expert Orienteer Hans Jurgen Luwald to measure his own speed and map-reading skills during the meet near Boston. His account:
“Go,” the starter says softly, and we tear up the trail at top speed, map in one hand, compass in the other. The trail goes dead north, then begins to curve east. Suddenly another trail appears, this one not marked on the map. We are tempted, but keep going. Another hundred meters and we pause, kneel down and take a compass bearing directly into the woods. Now we are sprinting, leaping over logs, crashing through small brush, legs and arms flailing. We try to pace a 200-meter leg but fail, losing the count at the bottom of a hill where we have plunged into unexpected muddy ooze. We stand, gasping for breath, shin deep in the freezing mud, tracing our path on the map. We are on the track. We pull our feet out of the mire, skirt the swamp and climb the hill.
We stop for another compass bearing; the needle takes an agonizingly long time to settle, then finally points north. We sight through the trees 45° where our hill−and the checkpoint−should be. No hill. Trusting the compass, we dash off again, leap a fallen birch, catch a sapling in the face. Still no hill. We stop, listen. Nothing but our pounding hearts and labored panting. Retrace our steps and go back to the swamp? No, we’ll crash blindly ahead on our bearing. Now the ground begins to rise: a hill. We sprint up it. Suddenly we see a tree and the red-and-white flag that signifies we have reached the checkpoint. We throw ourselves down on the ground giggling with relief. We were dead on target. Suddenly I know how Balboa felt when he first sighted the Pacific Ocean.
A dozen checkpoints later, at the finish line, 200 orienteers compare notes on the day’s outing, its mishaps and pleasures. Says one avid orienteer: “The nice thing about this sport is that no matter how long it takes you to finish, you can never lose. You’re having too much fun.”
