Depending on your circumstances, knowing how to navigate in the wild may rank high or low on the skills you want to learn.  Now, while everyone can benefit from knowing some land navigation skills, not everyone will need all the available skills.

  That being said, in a survival situation, the best advice is to stay at your last known location, or as close as you can be and bed down.  It’ll be easier for rescuers to find you that way.  If you absolutely have to travel/move, then leave notes of some sort explaining your course of action, direction you’re traveling, approximate time you left, and anything else you think is important.  That way, rescuers can determine how big of a search radius they need to set.

  If you absolutely have to get yourself out on your own, keep in mind it’s almost impossible to not walk in a straight line for more than a few days without crossing some type of road.  The trick is, to travel in a straight line for a few days.  Hopefully, the information I’m going to provide will assist you in this endeavor.

  Going off the idea that if you travel in a straight line long enough, you’ll hit a road, the first thing I’m going to teach you is how to go in a straight line.  Might not sound like it’d be that hard, but in the wilderness, under stress, it can be a real challenge.  Thousands of people get lost and wander around in circles every year.  To get back to the point, it actually is relatively easy to go in a straight line if you know what to do.  The first step is to know which direction you want to go.  If you have a compass or a watch with arms (hours and minutes), you can determine which way is north, etc.  Once you determine that, pick a direction.  Things to think about is ease of travel.  You wouldn’t want to pick a path that leads you right up the side of a mountain unless you’re 100% positive there’s people/a town/road right on the other side.  Otherwise, you’re going to expend a lot of valuable energy.  Other things that can happen by going up a mountain (depending on height) is thinner air (less oxygen, which means you get tired quicker), less shelter, faster weather changes, and usually lower temperatures.  So your best bet barring other reasons, is to go downhill.  Since water flows downhill, you’re more likely to come across water sources, fuel for fires, materials for shelter, and so on.

  Other considerations is if you see a clearing or thinning of growth in one direction, granted, you run some of the same risks as going up hill like less materials, but what you gain is conservation of energy by having an easier path to follow.  You don’t struggle as much, so you don’t burn as many calories.

  If you come across some type of flowing water, you’re in pretty good shape.  With rare exceptions where a stream might disappear underground for a stretch, following a stream will under a good percentage of the time either lead you to a larger waterway (boaters possibly), or civilization.  A lot of towns form around streams and rivers of decent size.  Other things that can happen is you might be able to build some type of raft to float downsteam, thereby conserving energy, but possibly having to worry about exposure/hypothermia.

  If none of this covers where you happen to find yourself, then setting a straight path is the only option.  The easiest way is to look as far ahead as you possibly can and select a landmark of some sort along your chosen direction, be it a rock formation, a tree, a stream, etc. what you’re looking for is something distinctive that you can aim for even if you go through dips and valleys and other landscape features.  Once you’re at the halfway point of reaching your landmark, you look past it as far as you can see and pick another landmark that’s on the same line as the one you’re currently aiming for.  The further apart these landmarks are, the easier it is to maintain a straight line.  Practically speaking, unless you have a super high attention to detail, anything less than I’d say 30ft apart isn’t going to cut it.  Reason being, for every landmark you aim for, when selecting the next landmark, there’s almost always going to be an error in direction developed.  Might only be a small fraction of a degree, but it’s there.  Might be to the right or the left, but it’s there to throw you off your chosen path.  If you are only picking landmarks that are only several yards apart, over the space of a few miles, you’ve possibly introduced a wide course deviation from what you are aiming for.

  One way to possibly overcome that short coming is to alternate which side of the current landmark you pick the next one.  I.E. pick a landmark to the right of the current one, and when you get close to that one, pick the next one on the left side.  You’re going to slightly zig-zag, but are slightly more likely to keep going in the right general direction.  That might be enough to get you out alive.

  As a final thought, you should always have some type of map of the area you’re in.  This can make the world of difference in how far you walk, and which direction you determine you need to go to get out safely.  A road atlas is better than nothing.

  To give an example, I always have a continental USA road atlas in my car, plus my cell phone has a gps mapping/tracking system loaded up.  With rare exceptions (need a cell tower to get map updates, so it’s possible I could be stuck without a map or directional guide), it can easily get me out of being lost.  And if you have cell phone service, you’re within 25 miles of help, probably closer to 5 miles.  That’s another hint.  If you have cell phone service, note how many bars of signal you have.  Check it periodically.  If you notice you’re seeing less bars, you’re going away from the tower.  That’s going to give you a very crude but effective way to triangulate where the tower is located, and once you find it, you should be able to get out safely from there.