Most games and sports offer their subtleties and nuances - those quirks loved by the sport's zealots and aficionados as proof that their sport is truly the most interesting and deserving of the most recognition. It must have occurred to many an orienteer that this sport differs from the average fare in many ways - it's full of oddities.
Consider first the name of the game: orienteering (ôr´'e¯·en·ter·ing). Neither my Funk & Wagnalls nor my Chambers dictionaries offer any origin of the word, and both define it as "a sport combining map-reading and cross-country running, where the participants compete to be first to cross an unknown area with the aid of a compass and a topographical map". Yet orienteers are always stopping to find all those markers and punches, not just run across the map. If the emphasis is on finding control points, perhaps 'orientating' or 'orienting' might be more appropriate. If finding is the essence, perhaps 'yogateering' would satisfy the physical fitness and spiritual well-being criteria. Frankly, 'transcendentalism' should get the nod as the most suitable moniker for an activity that so borders on the metaphysical.
To excel at the sport, it has been explained to me that 'good' orienteers, when running on a map for the first time, will note the types and degree to which features have been included on the map. This, I am told, will allow one to make better assessments along the course. "Ahh", I am informed following a meet, "That mapper doesn't include many contour irregularities. You shouldn't have expected to locate yourself by that feature." Or, following an exasperating late spring run on a particular map: "Ahh, but this map was mapped in the fall. You shouldn't have expected to find those vegetation boundaries on it." Consider the equivalent at Wimbleton or during an NHL game, if a serving line or blue-line, respectively, were to have a six-inch waver in it. "Ahh", explains the referee, "What do you expect? The line-painter painted the lines on your side in the afternoon, and that line-painter tends to imbibe too much over the lunch hour."
With respect to mapping, it occurs to me that orienteering maps suffer from the same problem that regular-type maps do. As a youth, I often wondered why my home town of Geraldton, a town of just 2500 people (or worse yet, Nakina), was commonly shown on many small scale maps of Canada, while many much larger centres in other areas were not included - to fill a 'typographical void'. A mapping-type person wouldn't leave a vast expanse of a map barren without so much as the name of a hitching post on it. A lot of orienteering mappers must come from small towns. I can recall stepping onto a small protuberance on the Plumesweep map to better my vantage point while looking for a rock, which was indicated on the map, and which I intended to use as an attack point. It took considerable time, including scraping the moss off the protuberance, to discern that this bump was actually the rock which I sought. Like the mapper, I had chosen the only feature in the area. This dilemna can equally be applied to re-entrants that one couldn't trip over, or paths that one wishes one could.
All of which serves to transcend the orienteer to yet greater levels of loyalty. Oh, yea.
And again, we're open 24 hours: