Do you have a link or a citation for the article?
That describes me exactly. I am very proud of myself because I am past master at getting lost, yet on Sunday I managed not to get lost. I was out on trails I've never been on before, and I was alone, with no map, no phone, no GPS, and only a vague notion of where the trail would be going. The trail was supposed to meet up with another trail and make a loop. I got to a point where I knew if I went any further I wouldn't be able to retrace my steps, and I wasn't sure if the loop thing was going to happen. So I did something completely unexpected.
I turned around.
And I didn't get lost!