>How do I determine the cardinal points?

- Orientation at the sun

Like (almost) everybody know: The sun rises in the east and goes down in the west. Roughly assumed we would say the sun is at 6 a.m. in the east, at 12 a.m. in the south and at 6 p.m. in the west.


- Orientation after your watch

With an analog watch: point the hour hand at the sun. Between the hour hand and the sun is the south. (That’s the northern hemisphere)
With a digital watch: Don’t despair! Just consider on which position the hour hand would be.

- Orientation after the stars

Try to find the Polaris. He is in fact pretty much over the geographical North Pole. The Polar Star should relatively easy be found. Try to find the constellation “little dipper”, the Polaris is a pole of it.

- Orientation with a temporary compass

So okay, you just need a sewing needle.
Search for a quiet puddle or something like that. Take the needle and grind it on your hoody, hair or anything like that, to magnetize it.
Then there’re two possibility:

Either you take some of your cerumen and daub it on the needle. With the cerumen, the needle should swim on the water.
Or you take a piece of paper. Place the paper on the water and the needle on top of it. Once the paper is saturated with water, it should sink and the needle should swim.
It will level off at the north-south direction.
Careful: Make sure, that there won’t be any magnetic objects nearby.

Just take a compass with you would probably be the best solution.