Local naturalist Mary Ann Schlegel can't coax her 12-year-old daughter, Hyla, into taking a hike with her.

But when mom suggests they do an orienteering course, the girl scrambles for her sneakers.

"I just think it's a marvelous way to get kids out in the woods and moving around," says Schlegel, a naturalist with the Lancaster County Parks and Recreation Department. "There are flags every quarter-mile.

"It's like finding treasures in the woods, and she loves it."

Orienteering is a sport for all ages and fitness levels that links map reading with hiking or running, depending on whether or not you want to be competitive about it.

Starting out as an event for military training, orienteering has long been a craze in Europe and has been firmly established in the United States since being imported here by the Swedes in 1946.

It's kind of like a scavenger hunt in the woods. If you've never done it, don't be put off by the compass and map-reading elements.

"If you can walk a park trail using a park map, you can do it," says Scott Fitzpatrick of the Susquehanna Valley Orienteering club, referring to the easiest of three courses that will be part of an orienteering event this Sunday at Lancaster County Central Park.

The event is aimed at introducing the sport to families and giving orienteers up to an intermediate level a run for their money.

Courses are color coded by level of expertise and length. The white, or beginner's course, on Sunday will be a 1.5-mile circular route with nine different points.

Participants navigate between the stations, called control points, as fast as they can, using a compass or clues on a map. When you find the flag, you use a punch hanging from the flag to punch your control card to show you've been there, then move on in search of the next flag.

You may choose to leisurely pick your way over hill and dale, enjoying the scenery, and may care less about the time it takes you.

Indeed, about half the members of the SVO club — including Lancaster County residents and families — don't do the orienteering events competitively.

But many do. Wearing special clothing and shoes with nubs for better traction, they sprint through the woods, eye the landscape and make split-second decisions on shortcuts. Guess wrong and they may lose the point-to-point race.

 "I've seen one guy who looked like a deer going through the woods," says Fitzpatrick, a 52-year-old computer programmer from Dauphin County who is the club's event coordinator. "He was bounding over things. It was just amazing. Those guys are in great shape."

Fitzpatrick used to be an advanced orienteer but has quit working out and has slipped back to an intermediate level.

What attracted him to the sport was the combination of being outdoors and hiking. But it was more than hiking outdoors.

"You have to do thinking," he says. "We have a bumper sticker that says, 'The thinking person's sport.' You have to say, what is the map telling me, what is the land around me telling me? If I miss a point, is there anything around me to tell me to stop?

"A lot of people think it's using the compass, but you only use the compass 5 percent of the time. It's more looking at the map and seeing what it's telling me to do in relation to where I'm at. Sometimes it's not a straight line."

Should I follow that tree line, then cut down the ravine? Will climbing over that boulder field save me time? On such on-the-spot decisions are orienteering races won and lost.

Eddie Bergeron, a SVO member from Cockeysville, Md., is pretty good at it. He's serving his third stint on the U.S. Orienteering Team.

Participants are aided by large-scale topographic maps. Not just any topo maps, these show detailed landscaped features of the individual course.

The courses partially designed by Schlegel in Central Park, for example, show knolls, stone walls, cliffs, boulders and both deciduous and coniferous trees.

Advanced-course events normally are around 3.5 miles. But others go up to 18 kilometers. One form of long-distance orienteering, known as rogaining, can last up to 24 hours. There are orienteering courses for equestrians, mountain bikers and cross-country skiers.

When everything is going right in a race, an orienteer in an introductory video to the sport by the U.S. Orienteering Federation describes the exhilarating feeling as "like flying or floating."

Here's your chance to discover orienteering

• Orienteering course at Lancaster County Central Park, led by Susquehanna Valley Orienteering club. Start anytime from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Sunday at Pavilion 3 near the park office and swimming pool. Look for white and orange arrows. Event held rain or shine.

• Three courses for beginners, advanced beginners and intermediate levels.

• No experience necessary. Free instruction for beginners and families will be provided.

• $6 for course map that can be shared by groups or families. Bring own compass or rent one for $1. For more information, www.furlong47.com/svo .

• Orienteering class in map and compass reading, 11 a.m. Saturday, May 16, at Governor Dick Park Environmental Center, Pinch Road, Mt. Gretna. Members of Susquehanna Valley Orienteering to lead class. For all ages. Begins with instruction indoors and finishes with a beginner's orienteering course in the park. For more information, call the park at 964-3808 or e-mail governordick@hotmail.com . Park Web site is www.parkatgovernordick.org .


Ad Crable can be reached at acrable@LNPnews.com or 481-6029.