> The same shit happens when driving.
In a broader sense, it never fails to amaze me that a kilo and a half of goopy cells that evolved to work out where the plants that won't kill you and where to trap rabbits in the next valley are - things that are, generally speaking, not much further than you can see - can visualise every step and turn of a journey of hundreds of miles, while being shoved through space at roughly 20 times normal walking speed, and do this for many different journeys *including ones we have not taken yet* but which happen to be in roughly the same direction as where we were a last week.
Where I'm sitting it is a four hour drive to even get to England and yet I can clearly visualise where I'd go if I was driving around Bradford, another couple of hours further south. For that matter, it's not much more effort to visualise driving right to the south coast of England, working out where to get the ferry at Dover, and then how to drive right to Geneva from Dunkirk, and drive around there too.
How do we do this with a brain that evolved to cope with a couple of miles of hills and forest? Is it because I can drive a car at 60mph and therefore cover twenty times the distance I can walk in roughly the same time, so it all just scales naturally?
It's crazy, isn't it?
You'll be thinking about this next time you drive.