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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Full marks to Radio 4′s Today programme for allowing even a few minutes’ discussion of the role of technology in our appreciation and understanding of nature.

Mike Saunders, Kew Garden’s Digital head, and I exchanged ideas and perspectives yesterday in a glancing and enjoyable way.  ‘Today’ is prime radio real estate and they could not have been expected to indulge us for much longer.

Of course there were many points that I would have like to have made, but could not, the effect being a rather truncated view, which appears to many to be fairly blunt. No wonder I was accused by a few of being a Luddite! My fascination and interest in technology might surprise them, but that’s not important.

If I’d had the opportunity, the point I would have loved to have shoe-horned into yesterday’s discussion was that I believe the best of both worlds is achieved…

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On a Country Navigator course on Saturday, I was asked a question that I get asked quite regularly:

“What sort of people come on your courses?”

It is both an easy and difficult question to answer. The difficult part is that the backgrounds of those who have an interest in natural navigation is extremely diverse. It is tempting to say that it could not be more diverse, but that is not true; by the time someone finds themselves on one of my courses they have selected themselves as someone who can reach the UK (typically) and also someone who either is willing and able to spend some income on a rare skill or is close to someone who is willing to do that for them as a present. Put another, more flippant way, I don’t get many subsistence farmers from Africa or Asia on my courses.

It is fair however…

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‘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 rays. Dr Tommaso Pizzari, an ornithologist from Oxford University, observed that although it made the birds more vulnerable to predators, it certainly made them more visible to females. ‘That’s why we think these puzzling traits evolved and are specific to males.’

Although the bustards have been found to do…

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I have just received an email telling me that I have been ‘specially recommended in Rough Guides’ new book – Clean Breaks: 500 New Ways to See the World – published in August 2009.’ It goes on,

‘In writing this book, the authors have highlighted 500 fantastic places across the globe which will inspire people to see the world in a new light, selecting unusual holidays and alternative ways to travel which make a real difference to the lives of local people and the planet.

Only a few companies qualify for a special recommendation of this kind, which highlights your company as one of our authors’ favorites.

We are happy to offer you and your customers 20% OFF the price of the book, RRP £18.99. To obtain this, visit www.roughguides.com and enter ROUGH at the check out.’

So there you go, a 20% discount for all natural navigators. Although I…

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I got back late last night after a very full day in the Yorkshire Dales. I was doing a shoot with the Escape to the Country team which finished at 6 o’ clock and then it was a six hour drive, Diet Coke and dark chocolate all the way, to get back home in time to get the first draft of my book to Virgin Books for the deadline.

Had a great, albeit quite short, time in the Dales. The production team and house-hunting couple were really fun to work with and it is hard not to enjoy a day in a place like that, even though it rained hard for half of the shoot. It will be shown around Christmas time I think.

Loads of great natural navigation clues and photos for me to share over the coming days.

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 Dean some months ago, and since then we have spent much time working out north from south based on the “tick” shaped branch formations.

I recall you showing us many pictures of trees and asking us to determine directions based on the tick shape. And I…

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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 groomed by the prevailing southwesterly winds. There were green, grey and gold lichens layering the various sides of the brick.

The rape flowers are coming into bloom over the South Downs, but they don’t all bloom at the same time.

The crop tends to be on a field that will get a good amount of sunlight anyway, often south-facing, but even within the fields there are subtle shade differences. The flowers tend to appear first in the south-facing dips in the land. This is probably because they are getting plenty of sun, but being sheltered from the cooling winds. As a general rule, nature moves faster the warmer things are.

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 mosses and lichens.

The more fascinating signs are subtler, created by factors that are minute but combine to create an effect. The first picture shows how broadbrush nature can be. Despite looking in one direction towards a single hillside, as many as six different bands of colour are visible.…

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