Saturday, July 14, 2012

Nature Pages: The Natural Navigator


British expeditionist Tristan Gooley has sailed across oceans, flown  between continents, and climbed many of the world's tallest mountains using the natural navigation skills described in this book.

While humans have been making their way from place to place for a millenia, there is no record of how the earliest travelers navigated, or how often they got lost. Accounts of navigation methods don't show up in anyone's literature until about a thousand years ago.

Gooley's obsession with the art of navigation began as an empowered 10-year-old sailing a dinghy. "I had garnered the skills to go wherever I wanted. Not where my teachers told me to go, not where my parents wanted me to go, but where I wanted to go."

This book explains how to find your way without GPS or even compasses, but with shadows, stars, tides, plants, clouds, the moon, the sun and wild animals. Also known as ‘wayfinding,’ natural navigation techniques can be used on land, sea or in mid-air.

The Rediscovered Art of Letting Nature Be Your Guide
by Tristan Gooley
Linden Publishing, 2012 
Nature Writing and Natural Histories
The Nature Pages
Science Writing
Guidebooks and How-to Titles