The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

The research that I have been doing for the book I am currently writing led me to an interesting study. Academics have found that there is an inverse relationship between wealth and awareness of nature. This trend appears to be true in places as different as Indonesia and the UK.

The number of local plant species that people can identify tends to be inversely proportional to their income. The study did not reveal whether this was a cultural phenomenon or purely economic one, ie. do people know solely because they need to or also because they want to?

I was reminded of this study yesterday evening as I re-read an old favourite of mine, George Orwell’s ‘Down and Out in Paris and London‘. One of my favourite passages about the stars can be found in this book. Orwell is spending time with a ‘screever’, a pavement artist, and finds this…

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Natural navigation is at its most fun when it is a puzzle and a test of our senses. Have a look at this photo and get ready to test your powers of observation.

This is a photo of a monkey puzzle tree that I have been growing in our greenhouse since early this year. I have taken it out of the greenhouse for better light for this photo. Greenhouses are great places to study the effect of sunlight on plant growth because all the wind effects are cancelled.

Now see if you can tell in which direction this photo was taken. Are we looking north, south, east or west?

Answer time…

In this photo we are looking west. The monkey puzzle tree has grown towards the southern light to the left, an effect known as ‘phototropism’.

‘That’s easy!’ I hear some of you cry, but I did warn you that…

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Although I occasionally get labelled as Mr. Anti-anything-modern-and-would-rather-eat-a-pair-of-hemp-pants-than-use-a-GPS*, the truth is different. I do use a GPS, quite regularly in fact and always take one on serious walks, even if I don’t use it. I was able to use it to test natural navigation skills in the Libyan Sahara recently.

Soon I am hoping to use technology to solve a riddle that is proving elusive to both natural observation and thought. That is the shape of the a shadow stick’s arc as it goes from one side of an equinox to another. It is too subtle for me to gauge from stick and chalk efforts in my back garden. The answer is not in any of the many books and articles that I have on astronomy, ancient or modern. I have put this little riddle to dozens of good minds over recent months, some of them professional scientists, and no-one…

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