Word: checkpoints
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Orienteering is a survival skill with military origins. It made the transfer to civilian sport shortly after World War I when a former Swedish army officer set up orienteering programs for schoolchildren. Students who had balked at conventional fitness programs poured into the forests to race from checkpoint to checkpoint, studying maps, steadying compasses and racing against the orienteer's chief adversary, the clock...
...trick," says a top American orienteer, Peter Gagarin, "is to balance between speed and accuracy. You can be a terrifically fast runner, but that's no good at all if you can't find the checkpoints." Indeed, a small error in compass reading can land an orienteer dozens of yards away from−and make him unable to spot−a plastic punch dangling from a tree. Each punch makes a distinctive perforation in the hiker's punch card, indicating that he reached a particular checkpoint...
...stop for another compass bearing; the needle takes an agonizingly long time to settle, then finally points north. We sight through the trees 45° where our hill−and the checkpoint−should be. No hill. Trusting the compass, we dash off again, leap a fallen birch, catch a sapling in the face. Still no hill. We stop, listen. Nothing but our pounding hearts and labored panting. Retrace our steps and go back to the swamp? No, we'll crash blindly ahead on our bearing. Now the ground begins to rise: a hill. We sprint up it. Suddenly...
...forces. In parts of Lebanon, the Syrians seem to have settled in for a long stay. In the fertile Bekaa Valley, Syrian currency circulates as easily as the Lebanese pound, and shopkeepers routinely do business in either. Arriving there from Damascus, TIME Correspondent Wilton Wynn stopped at a Lebanese checkpoint manned by a Syrian soldier. "Welcome to our country," he said...
...loneliest spot in the world" is what some of the American guards call Checkpoint Three. It is located at the southern end of the Bridge of No Return, over which North and South Korean prisoners were exchanged as part of the agreement that ended the Korean War in 1953. Near by stands the bleak compound of Quonset huts and wooden buildings where the LJ.N. and North Korean commands hold their Military Armistice Commission meetings...