Nature Is Your Guide

My parents gave me the above-named book when I was a child. (I still have it.) It was published in 1958 and was by Harold Gatty, an Australian-born professional navigator, world-renowned, I now find, for his extraordinary feats in air, sea and land navigation: circumnavigating the globe, working with both the Australian and American air forces, advising the Lindberghs, running air services and gaining huge respect and adulation  Much of his expertise derived from studying the navigational skills of indigenous people such as Polynesian long-distance sailors and indigenous Australian cross-country path walkers.
Quite a guy. You can read more about him here.

I found the book quite challenging  but one of the things I did learn was that moss and lichen grows mostly on the north side of a tree trunk, which is damper and cooler than the south side because it receives no direct sunlight (I assume the reverse is true in the southern hemisphere).

These two shots of the same oak tree reveal the truth of this piece of information which could be useful to anyone attempting to move in one direction without going  round in a circle. (Rocks and boulders would provide  the same clues.)

In 2013 a woman named Geraldine Largay got lost while walking the Appalachian Trail. Her body was not found until two years later - only a couple of miles from the trail (despite a massive search at the time). It seems that she was mainly relying on her cell phone to communicate with her husband who was waiting for her at an agreed meeting point - but there was no phone signal where she went missing.
Full story here.

It was a tragedy due to an unfortunate set of circumstances and very bad luck. There's no telling if Geraldine could have found her way to safety if she had studied the moss on tree trunks but she was said to have had poor navigational skills and was probably unable to use her map and compass. Also,  "going to the bathroom" out of sight is a social nicety that should be dispensed with if you're hiking in a wilderness.
Most of all you cannot rely on a mobile phone to get help.

And yet today I read  this.