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In which we periodically examine how art imitates life and life imitates orienteering.

by Peter Amram

Jim Crawford of NEOC alerted me to yet another instance of Lit-O, in which the written page yields a union of life, art, and orienteering.

It was a very high-profile race, featuring a unique chase start, and it began at 10:13 p.m. on Friday, April 14, 1865. The start triangle was in Washington, D.C., centered precisely on what is now 511 Tenth Street, where there was then, and there is still, a theater. Oddly, the Finish was vague: anyplace in the Deep South. The two leaders were traveling together, rogaine-style. Their trailing competition consisted mainly of a detachment of twenty-six men from the Sixteenth New York Cavalry.

SSaeger WOC2011 This summer when I flew over to Europe for my usual adventures, I did something a bit different. Instead of flying to France, where the World Orienteering Championships (WOC) would be held later in the summer, I flew to Sweden with Ross Smith. We always dreamed of living abroad in a place where we could orienteer and race more frequently. With the help of friends we secured an apartment in Uppsala, Sweden and Ross found a job. I took a leave of absence from my teaching job and at the beginning of the summer we first moved in to our new apartment. We plan to live here for a year, training as much as we can with the local orienteering club, OK Linné.

When we arrived the empty apartment echoed with our voices and we slept that first night on the floor with our sleeping bags and pads.

by Meg Parson

This July, I traveled to Poland to compete in the Junior World Orienteering Championships (JWOC). Before I recount some of my experiences, I would just like to thank NEOC for their generous grant that helped pay for some of my travel expenses; their support is very much appreciated.

It was an eventful couple of weeks, filled with both sick teammates and new friendships, solid runs from the US Junior Team and beautiful open woods. Yes, none of us spoke very good Polish (and an iPod translator can only get you so far). And yes, there was a minor outbreak of food poisoning at our hotel. But all in all the US Junior Team had solid performances during the week of competition and managed to have a pretty good time along the way.

by Carl Underwood

At the beginning of this past summer I went to Wejherowo, Poland to compete in my second Junior World Orienteering Championships. I arrived to the training week a few days late because my high school graduation was on Sunday the 26th, so on the 27th I flew to poland to join the team. It turns out that it may have been luck to arrive late; the day after I arrived the majority of our team, along with the Swedish team, had food poisoning. Everyone was throwing up and were sick for at least a day after becoming sick. Luckily a few others and I managed to stay healthy and were able to train every day.

During the training week the woods were beautiful; they literally clean their woods. You could see very far ahead of were you were and could easily pick out spots in the distance and find them on the map. Then there were basically two types of terrain: one was hilly with large contours and bland hills, the other was relatively flat but was filled with pits and small hills.