The Hits: My sense of direction is lost

The Hits DJ Adam Green.

13,560 kilometres. Alaska to Tasmania. At just five months old, a bar-tailed godwit set off one chilly October 13 and for 11 straight days soared over the Earth, touching down 11 long days later in Ansons Bay, Australia having utilised naught but knowledge passed down genetically, the trade winds, the earth's magnetic field, and an inbuilt sense of direction second-to-none.

Sometimes winding up all the way on our doorstep in the Ahuriri estuary, these incredible birds are a testament to nature's ability to provide certain organisms a directional prowess which can rival GPS.

Why, then, with such abilities present and available in nature, was I born the exact opposite of a godwit?

On a recent jaunt to Hastings to grab a sick child from her mother's place of employment, I figured if I just turned left, then right, I should be on track and heading back to Napier.

How wrong I was. Just like the young godwit has been blessed with the ability to head home, I seem to have been cursed with the ability to turn the wrong way every time an option is presented to me.

Driving down the now-unfamiliar streets and hoping and wishing for the large blue road signs with 'Napier' on them, I wondered just how long I'd been stuck with this affliction.

Was I, like the far-flying bird, simply born with my talent? With this innate inability to find my way anywhere? Had I brought it upon myself?

It couldn't be genetic, my father being a living road map. We could drive somewhere once and return 10 years later to immediately - and sans-GPS - find our way to our destination.

Nor could it have come from my circumstances, as my wife is able to form a mental bird's-eye view of whatever area we are driving in which is almost incomprehensible to me.

"Which way is the ocean?" she will ask.

"Ummmm... up there?" I'll hazard a guess.

"Literally the opposite way," is her frustrated response.

I just cannot get it right.

Thankfully for me, GPS has been my guide in many an unfamiliar situation. But, I do wonder how I would have fared in years gone by, as even when reading a road map I struggle to orient myself.

Perhaps, in those generations before, I could have trapped and tamed a godwit to sit in the passenger seat, and, turn by turn, point its beak in the direction of home. Who knows - maybe the Godwit Positioning System could have been a hit!