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Comment by microtherion | Hacker News Reader

Speaking of Great Plains, I found that, being Swiss, I tend to feel unsettled in regions where no mountains whatsoever are visible on the horizon. I'm not even much of a mountaineer, but it seems I need them around to get my bearings.

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I grew up on the US East Coast. When I moved to the West Coast for a summer, I found that my normally good navigational skills were totally scrambled, because the ocean was in the wrong direction.

It gets even worse on islands.

I'm familiar with what you mean - whenever I travel it takes 2-3 days for my internal compass to acclimate to wherever I am.

Lived in the Bay Area and got sent to Cocoa Beach, FL for a work trip.

Didn’t care to get out much., but figured I’d stroll to the beach to watch the sunset.

Got about halfway there before figuring out where I’d gone wrong.

One not only can watch the sun rise and set over the ocean in a single day in Florida, I've done so.

You get used to it, and honestly, it's nice in its own way. Having the sun at your back warming you on a coolish night while staring at the horizon is pretty peaceful.

Plus, I'd rather watch the sunset on the Indian River than to watch it over the Gulf, because of all the awful people who crowd the beaches of the other side of the state.

How did you get halfway there If you were walking in the wrong direction?

I was trying to orient myself coming out of the subway in the heart of downtown Chicago, and I said "ah, the lake is over there, so that's east." My companion was surprised that that was the landmark on which I seized, but I grew up in a rural area in which I could never develop a sense of direction, and felt huge relief when I moved to Chicago and there were two landmarks (the, ahem, Sears tower and the lake) that could be used for navigation almost anywhere in the city.

Once, when I moved for a while from the northern to the southern hemisphere, my time-estimating skills were quite disturbed because the sun traveled from right to left.

> I found that my normally good navigational skills were totally scrambled, because the ocean was in the wrong direction.

I experienced this recently while staying on the North side of Cyprus. If I headed east or west the sea was on the wrong side, compared with where it is at home (south coast of UK). I also get confused when I'm in the southern hemisphere, and the Sun goes across the sky the wrong way, and shadows lengthen on the wrong side of objects.

I had something related in Montreal. Bewildered until I realised the paper tourist map was rotated clockwise by around 60°. North was definitely not where it should have been.

Ronda in Spain is the only place I've felt agoraphobic. There are mountains on the horizon and it felt like they were an unsettlingly long way away.

I grew up on the West Coast and feel the same when I go to the East Coast. :)

As a Californian I have the same problem. Just about anywhere you go here there's mountains or at least hills. Driving east from Denver on I70 is just a featureless flat plane. I've driven all over the Great Plains and it's just unsettling. There's an old joke that you can watch your dog run away for three days which is not that much of an exaggeration.

As a midwesterner, California feels to me as if the very earth itself is conspiring against me, saying “those people in the hills above, they’re richer and better than you, poor lowly scum”.

It just unnerves me when I’m in California.

They're also the ones with all the wildfire and power outage risks though.

Oh, the hills are definitely saying that. Don't take it personally though, they say that to all of us.

As a Californian, I moved to Sacramento but it drove me crazy it was so flat.

> There's an old joke that you can watch your dog run away for three days which is not that much of an exaggeration.

We have a joke here about people who live in the flat northern coastal regions of Germany: They can see at breakfast who is visiting at lunch. -- But that is nothing compared to the people who live in the mountains in the south: They can see at breakfast who is visiting at supper.

I was the opposite, I spent a good chunk of my time growing up and then in college on the High Plains of Texas. When I took my first job it was in a pine forrest I often felt sick because I couldn’t see the horizon and because the trees block out so much of the early morning and afternoon light.

Growing up on the coastline, I feel this way if I go too far in-land.

I moved away from what I grew up with, and prefer it. (Good thing, I guess) Went from Manitoba prairie, to west coast. Mountains and ocean, and in my yard, mostly a wall of tall evergreen trees.

The weather is pleasant too, but I attribute much of the change to what I find to be a more appealing fractal dimension of landscape. It's not all the same, and I much prefer that.

lovely poem on the subject https://poets.org/poem/inland-0

I think it depends on how you grow up. I personally need to see mountains to be happy but I have talked to people from Texas and they got nervous when they couldn't see the horizon in all directions.

... and not surprising it runs the other way too. I have relatives from the Canadian prairies who feel claustrophobic in the mountains, like the landscape is pressing in around them.

Something missing in everywhere but out of town on the plains is horizon to horizon sky. Growing up it was a common daily occurrence now it’s hard to find. I don’t know about claustrophobic but it being missing is weird.

May be or may be not. I'm a 52 y/o Brit - we don't have mountains per se. I started skiing in about 1976.

I've seen a few mountains and gear changes.

I've skied in CA - Calgary is nearly the same Northerly latitude as Yeovil (Somerset/UK). It got quite nippy the last time I was there - about -17C. Banff and the rest (Sunshine Valley etc) were great fun.

I've skied a few other places too.

A few years back I recall getting a call whilst I was bimbling down the top end of Verbiers. Bit surreal - big hill and rather steep. Keep your edges keen kids!

This has to be the first time I've seen Calgary's latitude equated with Yeovil instead of that other British city at 51° North.

That's how I felt living in Washington after having spent most of my life on the North Dakota prairie.

I'm from the prairies. Personally I don't feel claustrophobic but big wide open skies are something I miss when I'm elsewhere, and feel happy to return to. It really is kind of special, though I'm sure most visitors don't even notice.

Prairie thunderstorms are also kind of amazing. Though my perception is they're getting rarer and shorter.

Oh, I do miss a good thunderstorm. The roof hail damage, not so much.

> Though my perception is they're getting rarer and shorter.

This does not match my anecdotal experience. I did a lot of camping as a kid in during the summers in Kansas and had the "pleasure" of riding out many a thunderstorm huddled in a tent (or in a concrete latrine if there was hail/tornados). Several years ago, I once again found myself camping in a raging prairie thunderstorm (thanks to being more focused on the girl I was with than on the forecast) and the experience was surprising familiar... Oh well, she ended up marrying me, so worked out in the end!

To clarify that bit, I mean the Canadian prairies. Specifically Alberta, in my case.

Funny, I'm the same way. Grew up in Illinois, which is totally flat. But after an adult lifetime in CA, it seems really, really boring to not have mountains.

Like you (but it was from Kansas that I moved to CA) I came back to the midwest after 26 years in Silicon Valley — wide-open (flat) became "normal" again very quickly.

Yep. It was a major reason I had to leave a very flat state. Lack of hills and mountains was just unnerving.

Me too. I live in an area filled with hills and forests. Big open flatness makes me sad. Developed areas too.

Grew up on the Great Plains of the U.S. and mountains make me feel hemmed in, ha ha.

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