>> You start heading too far east and bend back. >> rarely am I moving in a direction that's not either with the nature of the terrain or nearly directly across

>> You start heading too far east and bend back. >> rarely am I moving in a direction that's not either with the nature of the terrain or nearly directly across the terrain Right, you are not ONLY following the sun's direction, you are compensating for it's motion over time, and using the terrain as a guide. This is exactly my point: we cannot do what GP stated and use only the uncompensated sun's angle as a guide, save for very brief trips. And most of those we're also using landmarks to compensate.