I’d like to thank all the sharp-eyed readers out there who went out of their way this week to point out to me what a lousy sense of direction I have.
Like I really needed this reminder that entropy’s effects are inexorable.
If you’ve been following my stories about the annexation of the old Stone Hill Shooting Ranch property, you’ll have noticed that I placed this 109 acres of land somewhere north of the Marble Falls city limits. In two stories.
If you know anything about Marble Falls, Burnet County or the general Highland Lakes area, you know that this land is actually south of the city.
That’s SOUTH of the city limits.
But, since I’ve obviously taken leave of my senses, I placed the property north of town.
It started several weeks ago when I wrote my first story about how the city intended to annex the property SOUTH of the La Ventana development. This annexation process is only one chapter in a complex story that pits a developer against a major local industry and would take more space than I have here to adequately explain.
So, while searching for a way to describe the property and where it is, I turned the map upside down. It remained that way while I wrote the story. You can see the problem.
The mistake somehow survived the editing process (typically three read-throughs) and made it into print.
I caught the error the next day.
That error was promulgated in the next story, which many of you caught.
The reactions have been … interesting.
One woman called and wondered if SHE was going crazy. I assured her that it was I who tended to drive south into Burnet when I visited Judge Jones about legal issues or Judge Kithil about county stuff.
Burnet is south of Marble Falls, right? And Austin is west of here?
No?
Drat!
Another fella e-mailed me and suggested I needed to replace my compass. … but I’d just turn it upside down, I’m sure, so that’s no answer.
This is odd. My sense of direction is usually pretty good. Left and right have not been a problem for me since about the first grade when I noticed that I had a callous on the side of the first knuckle of the middle finger of my left hand. I’m left-handed and the callous was created by the way I learned to hold a pencil. Whenever I got left and right confused, I rubbed my thumb on the fingernail of the middle finger of my left hand and the confusion left me.
I can usually navigate big cities like Houston and Dallas as long as I know where I am in relation to one of the major freeways. With two or three notable exceptions, I have been fairly successful with this method of direction-keeping.
Now, I have been known to become gloriously lost from time to time. It only takes me about half an hour to break down and ask directions when that happens.
Then there was the time that my wife and I got lost at Enchanted Rock. The rock is basically round, right? Just keep the great gaudy thing on one side of us and we’d circumnavigate the thing. How hard can it be?
Harder than it looks. We were lost for hours.
As dusk descended, we decided that we could guarantee rescue if we would simply light a fire … the park rangers are pretty peckish about that sort of activity and would have come running. The fine would have been a small price for our rescue.
So, though I suspect my affliction has as much to do with the effects of entropy as anything else, I admit my problem and I’m looking for a support group that caters to the directionally challenged.
I suspect I can find some help east in Llano or south in Burnet.
This column was published in the River Cities Daily Tribune June 5, 2006.
