Getting Lost in Broadcasting House

Spent this morning at the Beeb's Art Deco emporium on Portland Place, Broadcasting House. Enjoyed the interview/chat with John McCarthy on his Excess Baggage show. My only concern was that they were going to expect me to find my own way out of their labyrinthine building. It would have made for a small story that: 'the Natural Navigator waxed on about navigation to the nation, before spending hours hopelessly running up and down the corridors like a rat in a maze.'

A nice woman called Lindsay ushered me safely out, saving some blushes.

The Problem with Analysing Nature

I feel a need to touch on a subject that occupies my thoughts from time to time. Any attempt to truly understand nature inevitably leads to analysis and yet nature itself seems well-equipped to mock such overtures. When standing on a beach, admiring the final deep pinks and oranges of the sun setting over the horizon, it seems churlish to let words like bearing, declination or azimuth enter our thoughts. To look at the wondrous and bizarre world of lichens and then think of Latin names feels wrong. Should solstices be about understanding the physics of our solar system, or naked abandon and dancing around fires and stones? I've absolutely no idea. I am delighted to not have any final answers in this area and so for now I will leave you with an excerpt from an extraordinary book.

'When analytic thought, the knife, is applied to experience, something is always killed in the process. That is fairly well understood, at least in the arts. Mark Twain's experience comes to mind, in which, after he had mastered the analytic knowledge needed to pilot the Mississippi River, he discovered the river had lost its beauty. Something is always killed. But what is less noticed in the arts - something is always created too. And instead of just dwelling on what is killed it's important also to see what's created and to see the process as a kind of death-birth continuity that is neither good nor bad, but just is.'

Robert M. Pirsig
from 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance'

An Encouraging Crunch Underfoot

I was on a night navigation exercise the other night - not to be confused with a 'stumbling around in the dark effing and blinding' exercise. I downloaded the photos this morning and this one reminded me of the importance of sound and touch, especially at night. The paths and animal trails were slightly lower than the surrounding grass and had been sheltered from the thawing effects of the day's warmer breezes. They had all retained their hard frost, unlike the grass which had softened.

It was possible to tell if I strayed off a path without any light at all, by the feel of the soft grass against the icy crunch of the path, ie. by using hearing and touch. A lot of wayfinding revolves around sight, but it adds greatly to the satisfaction when the other senses come into play.

Winter vs Summer Navigation

Summer is kinder to the naturalist (and indeed the naturist) in many ways, but not all. This picture shows how both the sun and the shape of the trees' branches are visible in a way that summer leaves would not allow. It is shortly after noon, we are looking south and the effect of the prevailing southwest winds can be seen in the topmost branches. They have been subtly swept from right to left. The wind effect would be more noticeable looking towards the southeast, but then we would lose the sun and it would make for a duller picture.

Mizar, Alcor and the Much Overlooked Plough

Northern natural navigators look at the Plough pretty much every night that is not completely overcast and yet we could argue that it gets overlooked. As the best known signpost for the North Star, our eyes tend to jump to its seven stars, line them up and then move on from the pointers to that friendly star, Polaris.

This morning I thought it would be nice to give it credit for being more than just a signpost. It is Ursa Major, the Great Bear and has featured in literature and art for as long as words and pictures have been recorded. Homer, Shakespeare and Van Gogh have given it the time of day.

The first thing we can do if we want to give it a second thought is to look to the middle star in the Plough (saucepan to some) handle. This can be seen clearly as a double star. It consists of the brighter Mizar and fainter Alcor. I took this photo early this morning, my fingers aching as I pried the frozen gate latch from over a post. One must suffer for one's art. If you click on it and look at the expanded version you will see the double star.

Rosy Fingers or Urban Glow

Everyone who starts their day outdoors welcomes dawn, but for natural navigators it is an important time that should be both enjoyed and absorbed. Sunrise is one of the best times to check our bearings, metaphorically and literally.

Something we need to look out for on land, and to a lesser extent at sea, is the light from towns. Light pollution is a perennial fiend for stargazers, but it can also throw us if we are searching for early signs of dawn, and its effects can be especially strong if there is low cloud.

The urban glow is unlikely to throw us a curveball if we have been studying the sky for a while, but it can be a problem if we emerge from darkness and take a first glimpse. The two photos above, which I took this morning, are only separated by twelve minutes and illustrate this quite well. If we are able to watch the transition from the first to the second, it is unlikely that we will mistake the rosy hue on the right of the second picture for a true sunrise, but imagine we are rubbing our eyes and our first sight of the horizon is the second picture. The temptation would be to see that colour as the sun announcing its imminent arrival. We would be mistaken: it is the light pollution from Littlehampton, a slightly less glorious ball of orange.

The Stars and Their Many Hats

I abhor the feeling of waste when throwing away a newspaper or magazine that I've bought but not read properly. It is more likely to find itself on a sprawling pile of catch-up reading. And so it was that I found myself picking up last month's issue of Astronomy Now, one that had kept me company on a train journey in December. After flicking through its pages afresh, I came to thinking about the vast range and scale of human interest in the stars. It is sometimes hard to believe that the minds that give us astronomical science are from the same species that created the Greek myths. Let us take the example of the star Castor in the constellation Gemini.

Is it just that, a star in a constellation? Or is it the mortal son of Tyndareus, brother of Helen of Troy? Is it a 'magnitude 1.93 A-class star with a mass two and a half times greater than our Sun and a surface temperature of 9,300 Kelvin'? Perhaps it is a 'beaver' as this is what 'castor' means in both Greek and Latin?

Of course it is all of these things and many more depending on the viewpoint we choose. For me, Castor is a star in the constellation Gemini, one I use to confirm that I have found Canis Minor, which I then use to find a faint star in the constellation Monoceros, this in turn gives me the Celestial Equator. The celestial equator gives me due east and west at certain times of the night. Horses for courses I suppose, or maybe that should be beavers.

The Dark Side of Light and the Great Bark Beetle Pile-up

I have commented before on the sensation of 'wrongwayitis', that is a feeling that we are heading the wrong way when the sky is brighter in a direction that jars with our expectations. Travelling to the 'other' hemisphere from our home one, north or south, is the most likely reason for people to experience it.

This effect can be caused by artificial changes as well as natural ones and it affects not just humans, but other animals and also plants. I received an email recently from someone I had trained last year on a Pathfinder course. They had spotted something on holiday that puzzled them initially until they cracked it:

'We spent our time in Majorca soaking up some rays. Interestingly I was looking at some trees that were leaning across the pavement forcing us to duck or walk in the road. The first thing that crossed my mind was why they were doing it, as they were leaning north. Over the next few sunny days I realized that the building on the other side of the road was blocking most of the light and the trees were in fact getting most of their exposure from the reflection of a glass building.'

Sometimes this effect leads to harmless anomalies, but for many animals it can be much more serious, as this article summarises.

Very occasionally the aim is to harm animal species not protect them and the author of this study has suggested that it may be possible to, 'to create massive polarised light traps to crash bark beetle populations.' It takes all sorts.

Navigator Chickens

The title of this post is a little misleading, but I like it and so it stays.

It is that time of year when we all too often wish for the weather to change and then as soon as it does we wish for the old stuff back. The recent very cold snap had us all jumping up and down and rubbing our arms from elbows to shoulders in the vain hope that this might help the situation. When it did not, we turn to each other and say things like, 'Pfffbrrrphoo, I wonder when things are going to warm up!'

Well they have warmed up a little and now we are being soaked by waves of milder, soggier weather with downpours that have me running around with buckets under leaks. 'Pfffbrrrpheeek, I wonder when things are going to become cold and dry again!'

Reminiscing about that cold, dry spell, here is a picture I took whilst feeding our chickens. Have a look at the frost pattern in the gate's shadow. The sun has been moving from east to west in the sky, leaving the crossbar shadows in the shade, but not the uprights. The picture is therefore taken looking north.

The chickens, however, offered me nothing by way navigational sustenance, they just attempted to steal the corn from the cup in my hand and make lots of noise. Somehow they worked their way into the title of this post, but exactly how remains a mystery.

Eclectic as Ever

Another Beginner's Guide course at West Dean College and another very enjoyable day. As usual a very diverse group, which always adds to the day. Today's group brought with them experience in rock-climbing, law, drainage, the Royal Marines, sailing, IT, horse-racing, tax, astronomy, farming and professional carp fishing.

Long-living lichen and other tongue twisters

We all see a lot of lichens, but we pay them little attention. They are not endowed with classical beauty and yet their absence can make places distinctly less attractive. What we think of as a typical English country church and yard might look closer to an unsightly modern development than we cared for, if it were not for the long, slow, determined influence of the lichens. Village churchyards form very good habitats for lichens: the choice of stone, the fresh air and the general lack of decorating or other surface tinkering makes for a happy lichen home.

It is their fussiness that can help us deduce direction as one type of lichen is unlikely to favour two sides of anything equally, whether it is a rock, tree or mound of earth. Some find their heaven on the shaded north side of churches, others seek paradise on the west side of rocks as they soak in the moisture from the rain bearing winds.

A few facts are well-understood and known about lichens, that they are symbiotic for example and they abhor pollution (they are used as environment indicators and are rare in town centres). In a spirit of lichen celebration, I thought that I would list a few things that are less well known:

1) Lichens have a case as the oldest living things, some having been around 9000 years.
2) Although sensitive to pollution, especially sulphur dioxide, lichens have a high tolerance for ionising radiation, significantly higher than humans. This is not all good news however. The lichens can absorb radioactive material, the reindeer then consume the lichens, the Eskimos then eat the reindeer...
3) The litmus paper that we know and love from our school chemistry days is able to change colour thanks to the lichens that are used to make it.

Angmering Park

Yesterday afternoon was spent doing some private training in Angmering Park near Arundel, West Sussex. I did not need to be a native American Indian to realise that this is a very horsey part of the world. There is a stud at the heart of the park and the well churned ground bears witness to a lot of hooves.

We were put through a gentle rinse and spin cycle as what felt like typical cold front conditions mixed things up, sunshine and cold rain wrestling each other throughout an enjoyable afternoon. The skies matured into a more settled pattern towards the end of the day and allowed us a clear view of an incandescent Venus and later the stars, including the ones we needed most: the plough, polaris, auriga, Cassiopeia and Orion.

Ravenala madagascariensis

... 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.