The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

I love the idea that the moon is trying to tell us where the sun is hiding

In this photograph, which I took a few days ago, the moon is chasing a recently set sun and has begun its own journey down towards the western horizon. You can see the sun’s bright light reflecting vividly off the right-hand, western side of the moon. The light gets brighter towards the edge, until it reaches a burning white at the edge itself.

It is almost as though the moon is trying to say, ‘You’re getting warmer!’

Trees are the easiest plants to read to find direction, but one of my chilli plants is also doing a fine job. It has been growing in a greenhouse and so shows only the effects of the sun and no combing from the wind. It could not be much clearer.

The plant is dramatically heavier on its southern side and it is also displaying the ‘Tick Effect’ across its stems – more vertical growth on the northern side, more horizontal on the southern.

Another very enjoyable Beginner’s Guide to Natural Navigation course at West Dean College on Saturday. There were sailors, walkers, a forager and an army officer among the ever-varied student backgrounds. My thanks to all for coming.

Last night, shortly after 10.30, I took this photograph of the moon rising above the woods and emerging from behind thin clouds. It looks very much like a full moon, but is actually one day after full, a waning moon. It does highlight the difficulty of judging the phase of the moon accurately.

From an aesthetic perspective there is no need to be able to judge the moon’s phase, but if you are trying to use the ‘phase method’ of finding direction from the moon then it is vital. I go into a lot of detail of this method in the book, because it is very satisfying but no less challenging. In a nutshell, you can work…

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The sun has reached its northernmost bus stop, it has put on the handbrake for a second and has now, already, begun its journey back south.

At this time of year the sun lights up the countryside in early morning and late evening in a way that is unique. The light pours in from low in the northeastern and northwestern sky. This picture could not be taken at any other time, as the morning light is filtered through gaps in the woods to the northeast of where I live. It lights up strips and leaves the rest of the fields in shade.

A belated thanks to everyone who came to my talks and walks at the North Kent Walking Festival and the Travel Bookshop last week.

A couple of weeks ago  I promised to write up the story of my afternoon with the Bedouin. The article can be found here.

A really great crowd came to my talk at the Oxford Literary Festival yesterday. The room was packed, which is always exciting. It did mean that the temperature levels rose as oxygen levels fell, but enthusiasm for the subject never waned. In this sense the admirable audience took the sun as their model, not the moon. Thank you to everyone who came to the talk and for making it one of those days that gives a writer a warm feeling, one that lasts outside the room, in the cool fresh air.

Book update… Amazon and Waterstones online are now restocked. The second reprint should be ready by next week, so any supply problems should start to ease then.

Sorry if you are trying to buy a copy of ‘The Natural Navigator’ – Amazon have sold out again!

After selling out, restocking and two reprints in the past three weeks, the book is now temporarily out of stock again on Amazon. Another massive thanks to everyone who has bought a copy so far.

You can still order it from Amazon. Or there are still quite a few bookshops that have a copy (worth phoning before), or online while stocks last at these places:

The Book Depository

Waterstones

Foyles

The photo above is of the hill to the east of my home, taken very early this morning. This is the first time this year that the morning light has appeared from the north of the hill. By June the sun will have moved all the way up to northeast.

There is a really good attempt to give a flavour of the whole subject of natural navigation in an article in the Independent today by Tim Walker. Tim came for a walk in London to sample natural navigation urban-style.

Anyway, flower pot time. Take a look at this photo that I took yesterday just before lunch. Note the wet ground in the shade and how the shadow of the pot has moved ‘up’ leaving a wet area in its wake. The shadow is moving west to east, away from the camera. As it is close to the middle of the day, the sun is close to south and to the right of the picture. The shadow of the young tree is a near perfect north-south line.

There is also a shadow in the pot itself, on the right, southern side. This shade is allowing one side to stay moist longer than the other,…

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Happy Spring Equinox!

My plans this morning, as announced in the Telegraph, were to head to the top of a hill and catch the sun rising due east. Sadly, the air is cooler than its dewpoint… the humidity is greater than 100%… there is a low level of nimbostratus… however you want to put it: the weather is not very good and the visibility is terrible.

Had I been able to see the sun it would have risen due east. The vernal and autumnal equinoxes being the only two days of the year when the sun rises due east.

Something that you cannot notice on any individual day, but only by studying the sun’s rising position over the course of a year from the same location, is that its rising and setting positions are changing by more at this time of year than at any other time. Near the solstices the sunrise position…

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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 this more…

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