Entries tagged "direction"
2011-10-11
It would be true to say that I would not be writing this blog if the sun rose in the same place each day. I don't mean that in a very general sense, it's not because the whole world would be very different and maybe the dinosaurs would have survived and humans would never have evolved, blah, blah...
No, it is because in the spring of 2008 I was busy trying to work out whether there was any point in trying to make a living by teaching natural navigation, or not. Whether, perhaps, that was the stupidest idea…
2011-09-08
My thanks to Richard Webber for sending in this photo. The telegraph poles in this picture are leaning from the southwest to the northeast. This is in line with the prevailing wind, which is easy to tell in the photo if you look at the straggly bits that have been combed over at the top of the hedge.
The question is, is this a coincidence or the cause?
Please could anyone pass on any observations they have of leaning telegraph poles and together we may be able to forge a new technique.
2011-05-06
Thomas Manning (1772-1840) was an eccentric academic and the first British traveller to reach Tibet. After donning a heavy disguise and much perseverance and patience he finally met the Dalai Lama, who was only seven years old at the time.An excerpt from his account of his travels is a good reminder of how much better connected the travellers of old were to the incestuous relationship between the sun, time and direction.We hurried into the town where we were to changehorses, but our haste was fruitless. There we were obliged to waituntil our baggage came up long, long after us, and…
2011-02-05
I recently came across this short video by Michael Barton. It contains a neat natural navigation tip and bushcraft at its most fun. Click on the image below to watch the video.
2010-07-17
The heat seems to have abated a little, but the sun has left its great big footprints all over the countryside. The baked earth is cracked and fissures run along paths and the edges of the fields, more on the northern side than the southern.The grass of our garden lawn is doing its best to betray both the sun's arc and the motion of the trees' shadows during the course of the day. The lawn is a patchwork of varying shades of green and brown, but it is not…
2010-05-03
I came across this fantastic map showing the direction of Mecca, known as 'al Qiblah', from different parts of the world.It shows quite beautifully how counterintuitive it can be over the surface of a sphere. Who would have thought that the direction of Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, from New York is northeast? This is due to the fact that the direction is calculated using the shortest route and this is what is known as a great circle route. If you want to get from A to B across the surface of a sphere then the most direct route…
2010-02-16
'Courting bustards' is not an excellent new profanity, something that would sound good with rasping voice and sent in the general direction of a parking warden putting a ticket on your car, it is actually a reference to the romantic habits of the male great bustard bird.Researchers from the IE University School of Biology in Santa Cruz, Spain, have found that the male bustards align themselves with the sun when trying to attract a female. Their white feathers, the bustard's equivalent of an Armani suit/Ferrari/pair of Reeboks - delete as applicable, show up better when aligned to catch the sun's…
2010-01-25
There is a good photo of the Great Lettuce, Lactuca Virosa, with its leaves aligned north-south on the Adur Wild Flower website. If you do use this to find your way then make sure you don't eat too much of it as it is reputed to have psychotropic qualities. You are likely to head off in the right direction, walk in a circle and then find yourself back in the same spot, shouting something like, 'Great Lettuce, Batman!' I digress.
2009-08-13
Apologies all blog readers. Firstly the last post wasn't really fair. The picture quality isn't good enough to be able to tell that the grasses have been blown in the direction that the picture is being taken or that the distant horizon is bright. The photo was taken a few weeks ago in Wensleydale looking ENE towards the dawn light.Secondly, I've been out of touch longer than hoped for as I've been travelling in some nearby, but strangely wild places recently with limited options for internet access, including deepest darkest Brittany and a hut on some rocks in the Channel…
2009-06-12
I took this picture a week ago. It shows the lower fair-weather cumulus clouds against the upper cirrus clouds. It is not at all unusual to watch the lower clouds and upper clouds move in different directions and to feel a third wind direction on your face at the same time.
2009-05-27
The Gooleys were camping on the Isle of Wight over the weekend. It was great weather, the few hours of rain that are necessary to make it feel like proper British camping kept themselves to late at night and early in the morning, which was considerate. A few observations will creep into the blog in due course, but to save me a bit of time as I work to catch up on some emails, below is one that artfully saved me the need to blog properly. Thank you, Rob.Tristan,I hope you are well.Emily and I attended your course at West…
2009-05-21
My thanks to Richard, who sent in this picture from a lad's walking weekend along the Jurassic Coast. He was given a private course as a birthday present and was on the lookout for natural signposts. Wind and trees don't scream direction a lot louder than this. He also spotted sand blown only over the northeastern edge of a horse training area and found Polaris, but then struggled to see it from the inside of a pub.
2009-05-03
This morning was filled with a breezy walk up to Halnaker Windmill. The sun was out for most of the way up the hill, but the sky also had a generous share of cumulus clouds.Natural navigation is a mixture of art and science and this can be felt very strongly when the sun disappears behind the clouds. Science allows us to understand the direction that the sun will be and there is an art to reading the cloud edges to reveal the direction of the sun, even when we cannot see it.The low trees on the exposed hilltop had been…
2009-04-30
One of the keys to navigating with nature is appreciating scale. It is vital that we do not spend too much time focusing too narrowly or widely. In this photograph, taken in the South Downs on Monday, our eyes are naturally led to the fallen tree. It would be very easy to miss both a bigger clue to direction and a smaller one.The heart of the tree is marginally closer to our side of the tree, which hints that we are south of it, looking north.If we peer through the undergrowth and bare tree branches we can see that the…
2009-04-24
It's 8.15am this morning out on the Downs and this sheep's shadow tells us that we are looking south. Her wool, or 'sheep fur' as some would have it, is blowing from the same direction as the sun and gave me a constant reference all morning.On a completely unrelated note, there is an article about the RGS in today's Telegraph that I have somehow appeared in.
2009-04-21
This isn't about the Force, although I did read recently that a lot of Scottish policemen have put 'Jedi' down as their religion on their work forms.More days than not I spot an example of the sun influencing nature in a way that is new to me in some way. In general terms it is fairly old news that a place that receives no direct sunlight will appear different in some way. It is in the detail that the novelty is to be found. The more obvious signs might be that it has different plants growing and an abundance of…
2009-04-20
Possibly the worst blog post title that I have yet come up with, and there have been a few...Our cat, Murphy, can be seen reflecting the direction of the last of the suns rays here.The tree shadows in the distance have broken free from the woodland in the background too for the first time this year at sunset.In the spirit of randomness to which this posting has succumbed I thought you might like this puzzle, set by a friend and former NN alumni.Do not be alarmed if my postings continue to be sporadic, poorly constructed, lacking in theme, good…
2009-04-10
I've been experimenting over the past few nights, as we approached the full moon, with a technique that I've been working on that combines two others. It is possible to find direction using the moon in a number of ways: by its shadow, by using a tangent to its crescent and by understanding its phase relationship with the sun. A very indirect method, that I have not come across anywhere else before, is to use moonlight reflected off cloud edges to reveal the direction of the moon, then to use an understanding of its phase to determine direction. Like a…
2009-03-31
In this photo you can see the dew that the sun has not yet burnt off. The shadow itself is mostly moving right to left in this picture, leaving the thin band of wet wood in the shade all the time. This thin band is a rough east-west line at all times of the year, but quite an accurate one at times like this, close to the spring and autumnal equinoxes.The small patch of moisture that is in the sun reveals the direction that the shadow is shortening, a crude north-south line as we near the middle of the day.
