The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

My thanks to Richard Webber for spotting and snapping these seed pods in a tree. They have aligned with the prevailing southwesterly winds.

Two nights ago the strong winds brought an ivy-ravaged sycamore down into our garden, destroying two fences and killing an apple sapling in the process. I spent a few minutes looking over it this morning and found it to be a haven for lichens, there were at least five different types thriving and probably dozens making less of a splash. It was a rare opportunity to see the tops of the trees as they are, without having to scale them. Lichens are very sensitive to air quality so perhaps being thirty feet up was enough to keep them above the heavier pollutants.

I can remember sitting at a restaurant in the small and perfectly formed fishing village of Trehiguier in southern Brittany last July. I had my back to the sun, which was setting behind the row of houses behind me. I watched the crisp edge of a chimney corner move upwards and to the right as the sun slipped down and to the left behind me. My poor wife had to watch me gauging the sun with a fist and then outstretched fingers and then listen to me predict when the chimney shadow would reach our table.

Last night my wife was spared such ordeals as I was working outside, in a small patch of woodland. I watched the sun’s light moving up the trees in front of me. Unlike the crisp edges of the chimney shadow, the edges were blended. The…

Read More...

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 titles, concise argument or beautiful short sentences. Most of that energy is being directed into the book at the moment.

There is a scene in the 80s spoof movie Top Secret where Val Kilmer is busy painting the scene from a moving train. We later see the result of his work: a blur of green.

I was reminded of this as we made our regular short and longer drives around the Brittany countryside. We covered 1500 miles in just over a fortnight and the number of times that the trees yielded all their navigational secrets to me in our moving car were vastly outnumbered by sights of leaves and branches blurring into one. Sometimes the collective sight of trees leaning to the east from the wind, or the rare silhouette detectable through summer foliage gave an excellent snapshot. All too often however the green of summer made things trickier.

I reminded myself of the bleeding obvious one one occasion as I allowed my curiosity about a tree that appeared to…

Read More...