The compass has been around for over 2,000 years and is a simple device. If you put a sliver of magnetized metal on a small piece of wood and float it in a bowl of water, it will always point north/south. While the compass itself has gotten much more sophisticated over the years, the concept hasn’t.
This discovery revolutionized travel. No matter where you go on land, sea, or air, you have a reference point to help guide you. Without the compass, and the discovery of celestial navigation, it is doubtful the New World would have been found as early as it was.
While the compass has been around for centuries, the land navigation compass as we know it is relatively new. In 1932 Bjorn Kjellstrom of Sweden, his two brothers, and Gunnar Tillander perfected a new type of compass for overland travel. It featured a liquid-dampened magnetized needle compass with a built-in protractor and transparent baseplate. When combined with a map, it was revolutionary for simplifying backcountry travel. Kjellstrom emigrated to the United States in 1946 and started Silva Inc. in LaPorte, Indiana where he started cranking out compasses en masse. Over his lifetime over 25 million were sold. If you own a compass with a clear plastic base plate, you own a compass invented by Bjorn and his colleagues.
I met Bjorn in 1989, when my colleague Mark Wagstaff and I spent a night at his home in Pound Ridge, NY with his lovely wife Kathi. We were welcomed into his home where the seventy-nine-year-old looked like the orienteering champion that he was. His home was adorned with antique compasses dating back hundreds of years. His business card had the quote, “Magnetism is my life.”
We were there to discuss his receiving the Paul Petzoldt Award, given to an individual who has had an outstanding influence on Outdoor Leadership. Bjorn certainly met the criteria. As we got to know each other he shared his frustration that despite the fact Silva sold more compasses annually in the U.S. than it did in all other countries combined, orienteering never garnered the interest in the U.S it does in Scandinavia.
Orienteering is a competitive sport that involves using a map and compass to navigate from point to point in varied and unfamiliar terrain, with the winner being the person who does it fastest.
Orienteering in Sweden is like skiing and skating in the Adirondacks. It’s as natural as learning to walk. In Sweden, orienteering competitions are held in every community, large and small. The granddaddy of them all, the O-Ringen, attracts over 20,000 competitors from 35 countries.
During our visit, Bjorn shared his desire to continue promoting orienteering in the U.S. He said, “What would you think if I sponsored a Wilderness Education Association member to attend the O-Ringen with the idea that they would come back to the States and help organize orienteering events?”
We thought it was a great idea, and before he died in 1995, he sponsored four WEA members. One of them was Lake Clear’s Brian McDonnell, who attended the 1993 O-Ringen in the Halland Region of Sweden. According to McDonnell, attending the coaches’ clinic and participating in the five-day event were great experiences. The age range of participants was 12 to 90. And Brian met the 90-year-old Bertil Nordenfeld, at the finish line. When asked how he had done, Nordenfeld responded, ‘It was a good day. I didn’t die!”
Brian started the Adirondack Orienteering Klub (AOK - get it?) and promoted orienteering extensively during his years as Director of the Dewey Mountain Recreation Center.
Why hasn’t orienteering caught on in the U.S.? I’m not sure. Maybe it’s the lack of tradition…. or that by and large Americans prefer spectator sports to participatory sports. Who knows? All I know is that unfortunately it hasn't.
Although I got the privilege of meeting and getting to know Bjorn during the 1990s his influence on me started much earlier. Bjorn not only made and sold compasses, he wrote THE book on land navigation titled, “Be Expert With Map & Compass” with the slogan, “Read this or get lost.” First published in 1955, it’s still in print. I bought the 1967 edition my freshman year of college and worked my way through it page by page using the practice map (ironically of a portion of the Adirondacks) with a practice compass and practice protractor. If you want to teach yourself the use of map and compass, it is still the bible.
Of course, learning from a book like Bjorn’s is great, but you need field experience. The Adirondacks was my place for that, and it still is. Just ask my good buddy Doug Fitzgerald who gave me the moniker “Bushwhack Jack.” Whether it was bushwhacking from the summit of McKenzie Mountain to Moose Pond, taking a non-traditional route up a trailless 46er, or hunting the shores of Lower Saranac Lake, I got ample opportunities to hone my map and compass skills.
Despite my navigational chops, sometimes, I overestimate my abilities. One example stands out. Early one morning I planned to take my boat up the lake to go hunting. The fog hung thick over the lake, swirling in dense layers that obscured the water's surface and muffled all sound. I figured I could get to my favorite spot up the lake by dead reckoning. Dead reckoning is heading in what you think is the right direction and estimating your distance by how fast you are going and how long you’ve traveled. You don’t use landmarks or navigational aids like a map and compass. It was dark and foggy enough that I had turned the boathouse light on before I got in the boat. With the visibility about twenty-five feet I said to myself, I’ll just head west and I’ll eventually get to the far shore of the lake.
I started the engine, slowly backed out and headed west. At least what I thought was west. Then I putted away from the boathouse through the fog I could cut with a chainsaw and headed up the lake. Pea soup was too kind of a description of the fog. I cruised at about two miles per hour and after what seemed like a half hour, (but was probably more like five minutes,) I thought I saw something in the distance.
But wait a minute! I hadn’t gone long enough to be on the west shore, so where am I? And what’s that up ahead? I couldn't make it out but there was definitely something.
I couldn’t see the shore, but what I did see was a dim light shining through the murkiness. A light? But there’s no light on the far shore.
Slowly but surely a vague outline of a building came into sight. A building? There were no buildings where I was headed.
A minute, perhaps two passed and I realized what the building was. It was my boathouse! I had done a complete 180 and ended up where I started.
Bjorn Kjellstrom was right. It’s always safer to travel with a map and compass.
Dead reckoning – at least in this case was dead wrong.
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