Working out how to get lost… ;)

And no, not that kind of lost, the real kind.

I’m actually very good at getting lost, but until two days ago, I’d never thought about how it happens. Much thinking later, I have a theory!

“Oh, Meeks, you clever thing. Do tell!”

Ok, as you ask so nicely, here goes.

I think our brains are conditioned to see a straight path as the right – i.e. correct – path. When we’re paying attention, we automatically over-ride this conditioning in order to get to our destination. But what happens if we’re distracted and come to a fork in the road?

which way would you go?

I think that when we’re ‘on auto’ – i.e. not paying attention to our surroundings – we are liable to keep following the path that seems more straight.

Of course, there’s also the problem of habit. Have you ever set out in the car for destination ‘X’ and suddenly realised that you were actually heading to destination ‘Y’ because ‘Y’ is where you go every day? -mumble- I have -mumble-

Anyway, the reason I needed to work out how I, and others, get lost is that I needed a realistic way for one of my characters to get into trouble after becoming lost. Me being me, I wasn’t happy with just an insight, I had to go make a map, didn’t I?

The blue path is the ‘correct’ path. The pinky-purple path is still safe, but the red path is the one that leads to disaster:

Map of Needlepoint Eyrie

You can see the two points where the character went haring off on the wrong path. Both appear to be kind of ‘straight’.

Unfortunately all of this is pure speculation. If anyone has any real info. I would really love to hear it. I might even change the map. 😀

cheers,
Meeks