The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

No, I have not let my 3-year-old loose on the keyboard.

‘Guugu Yimithirr’ is an Australian aboriginal language of the Guugu Yimithirr people of Far North Queensland. The highlight of my week may well be coming across an article about it in the New York Times. (Thank you, Tom Vanderbilt, for the great tip off.)

Why the joy?

Guugu Yimithirr is an extremely space conscious language and its speakers do not refer to the position of things relative to themselves, but relative to the cardinal points. It is always turn east or west, not left or right. Always ‘pass the salt, its just to the north of you’, not ‘it is under your nose’. This constant ‘cardinal awareness’ means that speakers of Guugu Yimithirr must remain aware of directional clues at all times, even if this is just the layout of their village, but it also means that they experience the world in a…

Read More...

I watched the History Channel’s ‘Expedition: Africa’ last night, a retake on Stanley’s expedition to find Livingstone. It is quite enjoyable if a bit ‘light’, the interest certainly coming from the internal politics of the expedition team rather than the nature of the journey itself. One thing did strike me, one of their challenges is billed as ‘using only compasses and basic maps’, which could only be billed as a challenge in the age of satellite navigation. Even this seemed to rob the team of some of their awareness of their surroundings. Pasquale Scaturro, the navigator, takes a compass bearing and then navigates from ‘tree to tree’ despite numerous clues in the sky and ground to help him hold a course. To be fair Benedict Allen does point out that the river would give a line to follow, but Pasquale does not seem to want the river to get between…

Read More...

… better known to its friends as the Traveller’s Palm, thanks to its habit of collecting rainwater (and bugs) in its leaf bases. Navigators and travellers are helped in another way by its leaves, as they are usually aligned east/west. This was one of many treats at the Eden Project which we visited as part of our family trip to Cornwall.

We spent some fun family time by the river Thames yesterday.We were in suburbia at Datchet, near Windsor. The recent heavy rains did mean that the water was fast running, but it was not a scene of fear and danger, more the scene of an enormous barbecue. Even so, I don’t think I can spend time near a river without recalling the extraordinary navigator, Harold Gatty, and the line:

‘In nine cases out of ten rivers will lead, if not home, at least to somebody else’s home.‘

The skies above the Natural Navigator last night as he tried to devise an ingenious new method to catch a pair of errant chickens.

(Picture taken by Ben Davis of Chichester Design, who designed this webite.)