That's kind of what I thought when I went off trail. I'm not gonna track this, but if I get lost I'll just head in a straight line until I hit coast. If I follow the coast I should come back to my base. But the woods just went on and on. Then I hit a coastline, but it was a large lake I hadn't seen before. That was when I started to panic.

Is it my imagination or did they change the map generator for larger islands? (I hadn't played since before H&H.) My last several seeds have all had large starting islands and I have run into shield continents that stretch over halfway across the map blocking the path to a boss. I never found a way around one of those.