st policeman or passer-by the way home. Most city boys will be
lost in the woods within five minutes after they leave their camp or
tent. If you have no confidence in yourself and if you are in a
wilderness like the North woods, do not venture very far from home
alone until you are more expert.

It is difficult to say when we are really lost in the woods. As long
as we think we know the way home we are not lost even if we may be
absolutely wrong in our opinion of the proper direction. In such a
case we may soon find our mistake and get on the right track again.
When we are really lost is when suddenly a haunting fear comes over us
that we do not know the way home. Then we lose our heads as well as
our way and often become like crazy people.

A sense of direction is a gift or instinct. It is the thing that
enables a carrier pigeon that has been taken, shut up in a basket say
from New York to Chicago, to make a few circles in the air when
liberated and start out for home, and by this sense to fly a thousand
miles without a single familiar landmark to guide him and finally land
at his home loft tired and hungry.

No human being ever had this power to the same extent as a pigeon, but
some people seem to keep a sense of direction and a knowledge of the
points of compass in a strange place without really making an effort
to do it. One thing is sure. If we are travelling in a strange country
we must always keep our eyes and ears open if we expect to find our
way alone. We must never trust too implicitly in any "sense of
direction."

Forest travellers are always on the lookout for peculiar landmarks
that they will recognize if they see them again. Oddly shaped trees,
rocks, or stumps, the direction of watercourses and trails, the
position of the sun, all these things will help us to find our way
out of the woods when a less observing traveller who simply tries to
remember the direction he has travelled may become terrified.

Rules which tell people what to do when they are lost are rarely of
much use, because the act of losing our way brings with it such a
confusion of mind that it would be like printing directions for terror
stricken people who are drowning.

Suppose, for example, a boy goes camping for a week or two in the
Adirondacks or Maine woods. If he expects to go about alone, his first
step should be to become familiar with the general lay of the land,
the direction of cities, towns, settlements, mountain ranges