From Carl Kaun:

Re: Sense of direction may be innate (June 17): It's anecdotal, but ...

I grew up in Montana. While I lived in Montana, I pretty nearly always had a pretty good sense of where north was, and of course the other directions as well. This was true on gray days and sunny, and also at night although not quite as sharply. When I moved to Maryland, after college, I still had a sense of where north was, but actual north was always about 30 degrees clockwise from where I felt it was. This actually seems to be the wrong direction if my sense was based on magnetic north, but that was my experience. Still, it's nice to know that us mammals might have a sense of direction acquired somehow.

The sense seems to have faded now in my old(er) age, and I no longer have any sense at all of where north might be, except by accessing a compass, the sun, or some other device.

Carl Kaun
Henderson, NV