The Art of Manliness - #343： How to Read Nature — Awakening Your Senses to the Outdoors

00:00:00.000 bratt mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast nature even if

00:00:18.840 you're avid outdoorsman you likely take it for granted when you've seen one tree or one blue

00:00:22.380 sky you've seen them all right well to those with well-trained senses natural surroundings

00:00:26.060 can actually tell you a whole lot the leaves on a tree can tell you what direction you're headed and

00:00:30.480 the smell of the air can tell you about the weather there are bits of knowledge and fascinating sign

00:00:34.120 posts all around you out there in the wilds and my guest today has spent his life observing and

00:00:38.460 cataloging these small details of nature and uses them to deftly navigate the wild without a map or

00:00:43.640 compass his name is tristan gully he's the author of several books including his latest how to read

00:00:47.980 nature and today on the show tristan tells us how he got started with natural navigation and how he

00:00:52.340 goes about rediscovering what was once common knowledge to our ancestors we then dig into

00:00:57.020 specific ways you can use nature to navigate or even know if there's a storm coming soon after

00:01:01.380 listening to the show you're never going to look at trees the same way again i guarantee it and when

00:01:05.640 you're done listening to the show besides checking out trees go check out our show notes at a1.is

00:01:09.900 slash read nature

00:01:11.020 all right tristan gully welcome to the show thanks for having me on so you have an interesting title

00:01:31.640 you are a natural navigator what is a natural navigator and how did you become was this something

00:01:38.240 when you knew you wanted to be when you were a kid it was a really gradual process i was um i was a

00:01:43.280 restless kid i'd see a hill and think it might be more interesting at the top than the bottom and

00:01:47.400 i'd be standing on a lake thinking it might be more fun on the other side and it was pretty gradual the

00:01:52.840 hills became mountains the lakes became oceans and i i don't know the exact moment when i realized that

00:01:59.820 navigation was the was the key to the sort of you know fun that i wanted and i've since discovered that

00:02:06.720 in every journey we take of any description you're either a navigator or a passenger and there's

00:02:12.780 nothing wrong with being a passenger but life's a bit more fun if occasionally you think right i'm

00:02:17.480 gonna be the navigator this time and that's that's i think the kind of bug i got even before i knew

00:02:21.800 what the word navigation meant and the journey's got a bit bigger bolder a bit more ambitious a little

00:02:27.180 bit more um risky at times and then there was another realization probably in my mid-20s when i

00:02:33.160 appreciated that the scale of the journey wasn't actually determining how much fun or satisfaction

00:02:39.600 i was getting i was um i sometimes taking on journeys of you know thousands of miles and doing some some

00:02:46.600 quite challenging navigation but i get to the end of them and i think i'm not convinced that was any more

00:02:51.500 exciting than than what i was doing as a 10 year old and it it was a it's a frustrating feeling and

00:02:57.540 then i realized wait a minute i'm just staring at you know electronics and maps and stuff like that

00:03:02.440 and so i tried something different i'd come across the idea you can find your way using nature and i

00:03:07.060 just tried to find my way across some some woods and a one mile journey suddenly felt it was amazing

00:03:12.560 being transported back as a as an adult to that feeling of excitement you can have as a kid

00:03:17.120 so from that moment on i was um yeah that that was it i was smitten i was going to um i was going to

00:03:22.940 pursue this natural navigation thing so you don't use compass maps it's just looking at nature to to

00:03:29.840 orient yourself yeah it's it's the view i take is that absolutely everything outdoors is part of a map

00:03:35.980 and compass and i mean literally everything you know if you want if you want to you can fire a few

00:03:40.220 things at me and i'll i'll sort of give you an idea of how i would use those as a map or compass but

00:03:44.800 it's it's not about precision it's about getting a better feel for where we are and how we can get to

00:03:51.200 where we want to be um if if all we want is the most accurate fastest way of getting somewhere

00:03:56.140 the natural navigation isn't very often the solution um so yeah pretty pretty much everything

00:04:02.000 from stuff you can see in the sky to stuff on the ground things in the water you know it's it's all

00:04:06.700 it's all can be used as a as a map or compass and and my life's work has been about understanding

00:04:11.920 that that better and what kind of journeys have you gone on using just natural navigation the vast

00:04:17.340 majority of my journeys are a mix of all types of navigation um i've i've flown solo and sailed

00:04:22.660 single-handed across the atlantic and it's actually illegal to fly without using the instruments to

00:04:26.840 make it safer everybody will be pleased to hear so in that situation it's more it's more a case of

00:04:31.720 natural navigation adds a layer on knowing that the sun rises in the northeast in the middle of summer

00:04:36.660 you know means that the bright glare above the ice um you know up in uh up in greenland and places

00:04:43.260 like that is is the the brightness is coming from where it should be if that makes sense

00:04:47.540 so it's a lot of natural navigation is a jigsaw you're taking pieces so it doesn't actually matter

00:04:53.960 what you're using it's the layers you add to it so quite often i will you know i might walk into a

00:05:00.320 wild place using a map and compass and then just stick them in the bottom of a backpack and find my way

00:05:05.060 out without using them i never recommend people leave everything at home because you know there's a

00:05:09.860 difference between relying on stuff and staring at it the whole time and knowing it's there if you

00:05:14.600 need it so that that tends to be what i do and i you know probably 19 out of 20 the journeys i do are

00:05:21.000 quite small a small number of them are are big um but you can just get so much satisfaction from

00:05:27.080 you know literally five miles of natural navigation will feel like a major expedition i guarantee it

00:05:33.700 and how did you uncover these these methods you know this way of looking at the world because

00:05:38.960 it sounds like this was once common knowledge amongst in humanity at one point before the map

00:05:45.780 and compass and all these devices that we have so how have you uncovered or rediscovered these

00:05:50.180 these uh insights into natural navigation well i've been really lucky because i'm not very good at

00:05:55.040 focusing on one thing for very long periods and it turns out the natural navigation is a collection of

00:06:00.420 pretty much all human experience so there's there's astronomy there's there are wonderful cultural

00:06:05.700 sort of uh treasure trove so there are techniques you can find in in the ancient greek myths uh a

00:06:11.280 disuse found his way across the mediterranean by keeping arctos the bear constellation on his left

00:06:16.580 that's a northerly constellation so that's that's how he managed to keep going east so things like that

00:06:22.200 they're an inspiration i might not use that exact method i'll use perhaps more contemporary version of

00:06:26.900 it but it gives me ideas of how i can do things and then i'll discover you know a method of using a

00:06:32.840 tree i've never thought of by reading the latest academic article in a in a in a journal like nature

00:06:38.240 so i'm combining something from thousands of years ago with something that was published perhaps 24

00:06:42.960 hours ago um astronomy one minute botany the next geology the day after that and as i say it's it's you

00:06:49.820 know the world needs specialists the world needs people who focus on just one thing and become the

00:06:53.880 best in the world at a small niche within astronomy but i couldn't do that i i love the fact that it

00:06:59.400 sort of it allows me to be um sort of intellectually promiscuous i can kind of you know i can i was out

00:07:04.620 there looking at fungi this morning and seeing if they were going to help me on my on my journey whereas

00:07:08.480 you know tomorrow it might be the way the clouds help and are there still pockets of humanity that

00:07:13.660 still rely on nature to navigate yeah the mostly the um indigenous communities in in remote areas are 1.00

00:07:22.800 using this they all have their own unique view of navigation there's no human culture on earth

00:07:28.040 where navigation isn't an integral part of life and i should probably expand on that a little bit

00:07:32.860 because my view of navigation is when we wake up in the morning and decide which side of bed to get

00:07:37.100 out of that's the start of navigating as far as i'm concerned there's a there's quite a popular sort

00:07:41.540 of perception that navigation is kind of a sort of niche technical skill and you need bother less

00:07:46.300 than one percent of the people in the world but unless you're planning to stay still for your whole life

00:07:50.960 you're a navigator so so these are skills everybody needs and within indigenous communities you know

00:07:57.620 some of them will be nomadic uh and a large part of their life is taken up with with natural navigation

00:08:02.760 wisdom so i i spent some time with some some nomads uh some tuareg in the sahara and the way they they

00:08:10.960 can read detail in their landscape and this is quite a common theme people people get used to their

00:08:16.120 own patch so wherever we live in the world we notice any slight change in our landscape you know

00:08:21.680 if you live in the center of a city if a shop closes and another one opens you notice it whereas

00:08:26.820 somebody lives in a wild area might not notice that but if you go to their wild area if a tree starts

00:08:32.540 becoming less healthy they notice it but but the city person might not so out in the desert until you're

00:08:38.340 used to it every single patch of sand looks quite similar and then you realize the tuareg are just seeing

00:08:43.040 you know just such such subtle differences just stand out to them so they are seeing a map in in

00:08:49.000 what to us appears sort of you know sort of homogenous just just sand everywhere and that so

00:08:54.680 those you know there are cultures all over the all over the world i spent some time with the diak in

00:08:59.240 borneo and instead of using sand they're using the way water flows so their concept of direction is all

00:09:04.860 to do with the way rivers you know the water flows and gradient the inuit like they can look at snow

00:09:10.960 and figure out where they're at even though everything looks exactly the same yeah that's

00:09:15.000 a great example and that's the sort of thing that i think somebody who's not familiar with

00:09:19.500 these sorts of techniques might think wow that's just that's impossible that's kind of that's a

00:09:23.580 weird thing that you know one society has spent their life focusing on therefore they can do it but

00:09:29.060 actually it's quite simple because whenever the wind blows over any surface on earth it doesn't matter

00:09:34.600 whether you're in the middle of a city up in the arctic in the middle of the ocean the middle of a

00:09:38.440 desert in in a rural area the wind the way i put it is the wind leaves footprints so everywhere on

00:09:44.800 earth has trends prevailing winds winds that come from certain directions more often than others

00:09:49.360 and they will leave marks and it's just getting to know the marks in your area the simplest possible

00:09:55.760 technique which applies pretty much all over the world is that the wind will create shapes where

00:10:01.760 there's a shallower angle on the direction the wind has come from and a steeper angle on the side

00:10:06.740 the wind is going towards so all you have to do is is however you do it there are lots of different

00:10:12.020 ways of doing it but how do you do it you work out where the prevailing winds are in your part of the

00:10:15.900 world and then you find these shapes it's the shape of waves swell in the middle of the ocean which

00:10:20.380 allows the the pacific islanders to find land that that you know technology would struggle to find

00:10:25.960 it's it's the way ice is shaped it's the way sand dunes are shaped it's the way trees are shaped

00:10:31.600 and you know right down to sort of little little bits of dust in in towns you get these shapes

00:10:36.620 everywhere well it's crazy you know and you said earlier that if you're in it all the time you'll

00:10:40.720 notice that blitz i think most of our people who are listening to this podcast they might live in a

00:10:45.660 city a suburb so they're well acquainted with that that scape of life what's the mindset shift that

00:10:53.480 needs to occur so they can start noticing things in nature is it just like how do you get to that is

00:10:58.440 it just a matter of spending more time in nature well the one of the big tips uh i'd i'd want to

00:11:03.940 give your listeners is this is not a an either or thing what i'd recommend is before you go to the

00:11:09.700 technology or whatever you you're going to use to answer your question of how do i find or what

00:11:13.700 direction is something just have a go at answering it yourself and the philosophy is it doesn't matter

00:11:19.680 if you're wrong and unless you're sort of you know running sort of an hour late for a you know

00:11:25.060 the most important meeting in your life most of us can spare 20 seconds so those 20 seconds you

00:11:30.560 just go right i know the map on my on my smartphone is going to sort this out for me but i'm just gonna

00:11:36.280 i'm just gonna have a bit of fun here i reckon okay i've just been i've just been keeping track

00:11:41.980 of the fact that the clouds moving this way before i got on the subway and i'm now i've now popped out

00:11:46.400 and i know that the station i'm getting out of is is is west of where i need to go and i know which

00:11:51.180 where the clouds go so my best guess is i need to go down that street and then you turn to the

00:11:54.880 technology and more often than not what what it says is you're not 100 right but you're you're not

00:12:00.380 you're not wrong either and that that's the beginning of quite a lot of fun because you

00:12:03.680 suddenly realize that it's doable and yeah we don't have to be too hard on ourselves we're not

00:12:08.840 you know we're not trying to become become you know like sort of a desert nomads in the space of a

00:12:14.460 day or two another really fun way into it is just randomly you know you could be looking out of an

00:12:19.460 office window and you just sort of go which way am i looking and you can try and answer it north

00:12:24.920 south east or west and you go right well how am i going to answer it again it doesn't matter if

00:12:29.740 you're wrong doesn't matter if you're wrong the first 15 times you do it you'll notice things

00:12:33.180 that nobody else is noticing you'll notice that's weird the birds always flying past that way or

00:12:38.460 you know i can tell that that you know the sun must have been there you know i can't see it

00:12:42.920 because it's cloudy because that whole part of the street has dried it rained two hours ago that part's

00:12:47.740 dried you have a go you might be 30 degrees out or something it doesn't matter you've noticed a

00:12:52.120 whole load of things the way an indigenous person would do and you keep doing it and then you you 1.00

00:12:57.140 surprise yourself quite nicely because the moment comes where you're you're high-fiving yourself

00:13:01.220 because you get it right and those examples you gave like you didn't have to get out into the

00:13:05.120 you know quote-unquote wild so you could do this from your office yeah absolutely and and one of the

00:13:10.500 things that a technique people would use in the wild which we can actually quite often the techniques

00:13:15.480 that are used in the wild the ones we'll borrow um and and tweak slightly to use in a city so a good

00:13:21.020 example is um academics believe that the way the pacific islanders found new land was by in a very sort of

00:13:29.300 casual way studying bird migration patterns now we can use that all over the world but actually a nice

00:13:35.260 city version is human beings migrate and we sort of do it on a daily and a daily pattern so whereas it

00:13:42.940 might be a six six month cycle out in the middle of the pacific in a city if you're completely and

00:13:48.160 hopelessly lost if you go against the flow of people in the morning or with the flow of people

00:13:51.940 late in the afternoon you're going to find the nearest transport hub the nearest station

00:13:55.240 now am i not that might not form a perfect map for you but it's the start of a process where you go

00:14:00.620 okay not everything's random in fact very little is random so you're just starting to put one small

00:14:06.020 piece in the jigsaw and starting to get a picture of what's going on around you that's fantastic

00:14:10.220 well in your book how to read nature and the lost art of reading nature signs you give what i love

00:14:15.020 about you give these specific i don't know tips i would i would call them or um mental models i guess

00:14:21.540 we'll call them on how to observe nature and so if it's okay with you i'd love to kind of get into

00:14:25.580 some specifics because as we were i was talking telling you um before we started recording was

00:14:30.420 after reading this book whenever i go outside now i'm looking at my surroundings in a completely

00:14:36.160 different way because i know these things that i should be looking for so it's okay with you can

00:14:40.740 we go through some of this stuff because i think it's just really fascinating yeah i'd love to okay

00:14:45.160 well let's talk about like you start off talking about like kind of big picture getting the lay of

00:14:48.660 the land and you recommend using a method called sorted which is an acronym what is the sorted method and

00:14:55.600 what are we trying to do um with this method yeah it's it's as you say it's a way of sort of

00:15:01.280 zooming in starting with a very broad focus uh s-o-r-t-e-d sorted so we start with s for shape

00:15:08.440 uh and every landscape uh we're in whether it's urban or wild we're going to find there are there

00:15:14.980 are one or two quite dominant uh geographical influences and just once we tune into them

00:15:20.120 we notice there's a slightly higher bit of ground and then there's a valley and then there's a river for

00:15:24.640 example once we've tuned into that we've actually started to form quite an important map

00:15:28.900 as i say the the diac in borneo um can find their way they can walk for literally days just on that

00:15:34.860 idea so it sounds very vague and perhaps not hugely practical but once you start to think okay i know

00:15:39.820 which side of the river i am and then you start to relate to where various things are compared to that

00:15:45.060 then you've just started to form a very basic sort of map the o um i i you know i use the word

00:15:50.100 ologies so in terms of the soil and various other things but it's really a very broad brush way of saying

00:15:56.760 what what is in the ground um so if we know for example we're in a very sort of acidic area you're

00:16:02.840 going to get a certain type of landscape you'd expect you know if there's loads of granite around

00:16:07.460 you've got a certain type of moorland if you've got very alkaline soil you expect different types

00:16:11.360 of wildflowers so if we just start to put two pieces together we start to think okay i know i'm on

00:16:16.780 slightly higher ground i know that the river is out there somewhere and i know i'm on this type of

00:16:22.660 soil so i'll be able to tell before i hit the river that there are these certain types of plants

00:16:27.840 because i've noticed when the soil is this type i get bright purple flowers before i hit water so

00:16:33.160 so we've just started to put another couple of pieces together next thing are for roots so pretty

00:16:38.920 much every landscape we're likely to find ourselves in the one or two exceptions there will be some sort

00:16:43.660 of human footprints there'll be paths there'll be tracks there'll be roads there'll be rail and they

00:16:49.380 tend to mirror the nature's own kind of you know we don't we don't go and put a road in the in the

00:16:54.340 in the hard hardest possible place so we find there's a relationship between those and the hills

00:16:59.580 and the rivers and things like that and so we're just starting to put another layer on top of that

00:17:03.740 then we've got t for tracks that's just starting to tune into who else is out there we all know what

00:17:09.100 sort of human footprints look like in our various different sort of footwear but we start to pick up on

00:17:13.420 what the other animals are doing um and again all these pieces start to fit together because

00:17:17.720 the relationship between the high ground the water and what the animals are doing is is all

00:17:21.980 integrated there's very very little that's random out there um ears for edges so whenever we're

00:17:28.740 walking along a path or a track we get a huge concentration of things happening at the the edge

00:17:33.600 of any track or path we're walking down it's just one of the one of the sort of laws of nature that

00:17:39.140 most stuff happens at edges so if you're if you're in a rural area you've got a few sort of fields and

00:17:45.200 then a woodland the vast majority of action is going to happen where the the fields touch the

00:17:50.580 woodland and it's the same as tron paths you get the greatest number of plants just at the edge of

00:17:55.680 the path not in the middle and not way out into the wilderness either because it's just that mix

00:18:00.680 mix of things happening and then d is a kind of capsule it's details you know in in the lost art of

00:18:06.980 reading nature signs there are 850 things to look for so d is kind of we kind of feel we've got the

00:18:12.260 broad brush we know the shape of the land we know we know what it's made of we know where the kind

00:18:16.280 of rivers are we know all of these sorts of things we know what animals are there uh and then d is just

00:18:20.620 kind of like okay i'm now going to try and work something out just from the the size of the leaf in

00:18:25.820 front of me that's awesome i love that this mental model is fantastic because i've been using it in the

00:18:30.900 past few days and it's crazy sort of the the map you can develop in your brain just by using

00:18:36.560 the sorted method it's it's phenomenal let's get into some of these details because not only is can

00:18:42.900 it be useful to navigate i just think it's interesting and it's made me more appreciative

00:18:47.740 or more mindful of my environment so for example one of my favorite chapters was on how to use trees

00:18:53.760 to figure out you know which direction is which yeah this is a really good example of how

00:18:59.760 if you haven't come across this stuff it can seem like the dark arts it's kind of what we can use it does 1.00

00:19:04.940 it's it's and and and and actually underpinning it all is just some very very simple sort of nature

00:19:11.440 um all green plants are responding to the the elements in particular things like light and wind

00:19:17.420 uh once we know the sun is due south in the middle of the day every day of the year and and that's when

00:19:22.540 it's giving us most of its light we find that of course green plants you know the light is a huge

00:19:27.400 influence you know it's it's their breakfast breakfast lunch and dinner they they can't function

00:19:31.680 without it so actually it'd be really odd if any green plants were symmetrical if you're getting

00:19:37.680 most of your energy from one side of the sky as it were you know it doesn't make any sense to be

00:19:42.820 symmetrical so we find that the shape of a tree is influenced by that we find there are more and

00:19:48.760 bigger branches on average on the southern side of trees particularly deciduous trees some of the

00:19:53.460 pines as well like the scots pine but the next thing we find is that actually if we if we zoom in a

00:19:58.020 little bit the shape of the branches is shaped by light as well because the branches are growing

00:20:02.500 towards the sunlight which means on average they will grow more vertically on the northern side

00:20:08.160 and closer to horizontal on the southern side and what that means is if you're looking from one side

00:20:13.700 of the tree you get what i call the check effect you just imagine sort of drawing a we call them ticks

00:20:18.360 in the uk i think you guys call them checks you just draw a check in the air you have that sort of

00:20:22.340 vertical side to it and then a horizontal side to it and that it's a subtle effect um in truth most of

00:20:28.680 the stuff that i write about in research is obvious when you know to look for it but actually sits just

00:20:34.300 below most people's sort of sort of noticing radar if you know what i mean because it's it's there are

00:20:39.560 certain things everybody sees everybody can count the rings on a on a you know a tree trunk that's been

00:20:44.300 been felled that stuff that's still obvious but most of the stuff is really easy to see when you know

00:20:49.460 to look for it if we then think of the leaves in um in deciduous trees uh we have two types of leaf

00:20:55.880 we have the sun leaf and the and the shade leaf on the north side of the tree the leaves aren't

00:21:00.640 getting enough energy so the tree has a trick it sends a sort of chemical message to the leaves

00:21:05.780 basically says you need to sort your act out and what it does is the leaves change from sun leaves

00:21:10.940 to shade leaves they grow bigger darker in color and thinner so what we find is the leaves on the north

00:21:16.640 side of a tree are bigger and darker in color than the ones on the south side of the tree and

00:21:21.180 there are you know you get more roots on the side of a tree that the the wind comes from so once you

00:21:26.200 know the prevailing wind direction in your area and it's the sort of thing you only need to sort of

00:21:29.940 work out once it'll cover you know thousands of square miles most likely you can see that these

00:21:35.260 roots this is a fun thing you can do actually you can you can sort of um you won't be able to do it

00:21:40.340 on yourself because i'm about to give you the answer but you can do it on a a friend and

00:21:44.160 just ask them to draw a tree and then ask them to draw the roots what you'll find is they draw the

00:21:49.100 roots underground but actually if you go out there and have a look at trees the vast majority of trees

00:21:53.780 you can see the roots where they where they come up from the ground joining the trunk of the tree above

00:21:58.660 the ground and these are called guy roots and they they are there like guy ropes on a tent to stop the

00:22:04.440 tree uh being pushed over by the winds so it's logical almost all this stuff is just it's almost like

00:22:10.600 nature's common sense it's like well if you're going to have roots to stop a tree blowing over

00:22:14.580 you're going to want them bigger stronger and longer on the side that the wind comes from

00:22:17.660 so in in total there are 19 different methods but we we've got a nice selection there hopefully

00:22:22.660 and you even talk about how the bark on some sides are darker or lighter than the other because the tree

00:22:27.700 creates its own sunscreen yeah yeah absolutely um you you get a mixture instead of looking for

00:22:34.880 individual algae lichens mosses or other effects on the tree what i recommend to people is because

00:22:41.160 it'll be slightly different wherever you are it's just once if you whether you're using the sun or a

00:22:45.900 compass or a smartphone it doesn't matter once you've kind of got your bearings just notice how

00:22:49.240 in any light woodland if you're in really dense woodland there's not enough light to create dramatic

00:22:54.040 effects but most woodland we'll find ourselves in a bit of lights getting in and you'll notice the

00:22:58.900 color on each side of the bark is at first it appears subtly different and then when you tune into it

00:23:03.780 you you you start to notice that actually it's quite a dramatic difference quite often

00:23:07.660 you know the more sort of open the woodland is the more dramatic the effect sometimes you'll get

00:23:12.000 really really vivid colors in some some parts of the world i found sort of bright greens and bright

00:23:17.560 oranges on the south side of trees and very dark strips sometimes you get this kind of this rust

00:23:22.920 color on the north side of a tree which is an algae called Trentipolia but actually the people can get

00:23:28.320 put off if they think right i've got to look for this individual thing that's called this in this

00:23:32.360 situation you don't need to do any of that you just kind of go out there and you go okay i've got

00:23:35.760 my bearings it's it's lunchtime i know the sun's south in the middle of the day okay so that's

00:23:39.760 roughly south oh yeah when i look that way all the trees are this color and when i look that way

00:23:44.360 they're a different color and you're you're up and running right that's the one i've been using a lot

00:23:48.340 because there's trees everywhere and so you can test it but it's hard i've noticed in like suburban

00:23:53.140 neighborhood because like as you said most trees have this you know general asymmetrical

00:23:56.980 shape thanks to nature but in most you know suburban areas trees are trimmed so they're more symmetrical

00:24:04.740 so that's one sign that you're around human beings is that trees take on an oddly symmetrical shape

00:24:10.080 yes and even in those ones it's it's worth looking look at the very tops of the tree because you're

00:24:16.380 quite right you know the more more densely populated an area is the more we tend to bully nature so

00:24:21.980 so yeah we'll trim trees right down but if if there'll still be a little bit of growth up the

00:24:27.340 top of the tree probably that's been exposed to the prevailing winds you know even even in the heart

00:24:31.460 of quite big cities you know i found it in the heart of london in manhattan um you just see you just

00:24:36.740 see a little what looks like a sort of giant's hand sort of brushed over the top of the tree and you

00:24:40.860 just get a very slight bending in the in the most exposed the most exposed part of the tree is

00:24:45.540 obviously the highest part but that also tends to be the weakest part so it doesn't take

00:24:49.140 you know it doesn't take sort of gale force winds to bend those over you just you just need a little

00:24:53.440 prevailing wind reaching it which you know you might not get in a in a you know a high rise sort

00:24:59.180 of street but but in a park in a city you can quite often spot it and you can also use not just

00:25:03.920 individual trees but like how trees grow together to figure out if you're close to humans or a city or

00:25:11.960 not i think you talked about in the book if there's you come upon a wooded area and there's just a

00:25:16.720 really fine like a detailed line like where the the forest quote-unquote starts that that's something

00:25:23.220 you should tune into because that might mean you're close to a city or a farm or something

00:25:28.120 yeah absolutely i think one of the things that we we can build quite quickly uh and it sort of appeals

00:25:34.420 to our sort of ancient view of of nature is when other human beings are involved you have been you

00:25:40.840 know getting involved in the landscape because if we think historically it was quite an important sign

00:25:46.580 um if you're walking across an area that you think's total wilderness you know going back many

00:25:50.560 thousands of years now uh and actually it's it's a place that's that's been occupied by other humans

00:25:56.720 that you don't know were there you know that's as great a threat as anything you know nature's going

00:26:01.120 to throw at you probably so my theory which i can't back up with any science it's just a gut feel

00:26:05.980 is that is that we are particularly sensitive to to any signs of of human sculpting of the landscape so

00:26:13.200 as you say you know straight lines on forests you know nature doesn't create that many straight lines

00:26:17.300 if you if you talk to indigenous people they'll go several years without seeing a right angle 1.00

00:26:21.840 and so these straight lines we tend to pick up on our our eyes and our brain work together to notice

00:26:27.240 shapes really really effectively and once we know that certain shapes aren't natural we we sort of

00:26:32.920 start to go okay we're getting closer to to a town now and again a lot of natural navigation is is

00:26:38.360 shape recognition you know if you notice you know there's a copse there's a small sort of

00:26:42.980 woodland on the hill and you just happen to notice oh that's an interesting shape the trees are

00:26:47.020 shorter on one side than the other that's not going to be random that's because there's more

00:26:51.000 wind coming from that side so again you've got a compass on the top of a hill that might be you

00:26:54.300 know four or five miles away so you mentioned earlier that you uh were observing some mushrooms

00:26:58.960 and fungi to figure out if that could be any of use to you in your natural navigation

00:27:02.100 are there any things you've come across that with mushrooms or mosses or algae where

00:27:07.740 they have a particular pattern that can lend clues to know where you're at yeah the the golden rule

00:27:15.040 that sort of underpins all of this is is no organisms live in isolation they all have some

00:27:20.420 relationships with other things if we take take the idea of you know every animal is is dependent on

00:27:25.860 plants at some point in its future and even if it's a carnivore it's going to eat something that it

00:27:29.640 is then eating plants every single plant is sensitive to what's in the ground what's happening

00:27:34.680 in the sky temperature air quality all of these things so what we find is actually it's a totally

00:27:39.620 interconnected jigsaw so if we take the example that every tree is part of a map beach trees don't

00:27:45.040 like waterlogged soil um alders willows trees like that quite happy in quite wet ground so for the top

00:27:51.180 of the hill we're looking out there go okay we can choose those trees for a dry root those trees if

00:27:55.260 we're looking for a river then there are other trees which help us in a different sort of map making

00:27:59.280 and they are trees some trees need to they establish themselves very slowly so trees like oaks are you

00:28:06.380 know they don't just pop up randomly all over the place whereas trees like you know birches do they

00:28:11.900 have a totally different strategy for survival which is you know millions of seeds on the wind

00:28:16.900 popping up all over the place very very few of them survive you know past the past the first 10 years

00:28:22.160 of life but there are so many out there that it kind of works for them but in a map making sense what

00:28:27.180 that means is they tend to do really well in at the edge of forests they're kind of they're kind

00:28:32.420 of first in they're like the the advanced party they go in there and start over many decades the

00:28:37.940 slower trees like the oaks will will start to bully them out because they have a better long-term

00:28:42.460 strategy so in map making terms what we say is okay we feel a bit lost in the woods and you were

00:28:49.300 just sensitive to the fact the trees have changed we've been passing a few oaks and a few beaches

00:28:53.360 suddenly we're seeing birches ah we're getting near the edge of the woodland now all we do is

00:28:57.540 bring in an extra piece which is you know fungi don't live in isolation they have um you know

00:29:03.520 quite often uh essential relationships with other organisms not least trees and tree roots

00:29:08.260 so we quite often find these these sort of if not symbiotic then certainly sort of partnership

00:29:12.660 relationships where a certain fungi will mean a certain tree so there's a there's a there's a fungi

00:29:19.060 you know i see see around here a bit and um you know there'll be an equivalent uh where you are

00:29:24.540 it's called the flyer garrick and it's bright red with white spots it's kind of it's probably the

00:29:29.340 one that inspired the sort of fairy tale toadstool you know the one i mean with the bright red and the

00:29:33.440 white spots and that is a very strong indicator of birch trees so if we start bringing all of those

00:29:39.200 pieces together we feel a bit lost in the woods the only thing we can remember to do is right we just

00:29:44.860 mustn't walk in circles so we you know we've decided to try and use use whatever method we have

00:29:50.020 maybe the feel of the wind we're going to try not to walk in circles and because we're sensitive to

00:29:54.240 the nature we notice the trees have changed and then suddenly we spot the the bright red mushroom

00:30:00.680 in the distance yes it's a flyer garrick yes there are the birch trees so so it's all all part of that

00:30:05.980 map of um things getting a little bit better yeah so yeah everything builds upon it you can't just

00:30:10.820 use you can't use these things in isolation oftentimes you have to use them interconnected

00:30:16.180 because nature is interconnected absolutely it's to do with the size of jigsaw pieces if if our aim

00:30:21.520 is to for people to get up and running they'll just want to be honest they'll just want tricks i try not

00:30:26.220 to teach tricks because it's sort of in a way it's stripping out some of the interest but sun due south

00:30:32.100 in the middle of the day if nobody's used that for a while and you just start using it you start to

00:30:35.700 notice other things quite quickly but that's that's like one big jigsaw piece that's giving you a really

00:30:40.200 dependable bit of direction at the other end of the scale we might have the way uh you know a

00:30:44.500 certain butterfly has a relationship with a certain plant or or perhaps it only flies in certain

00:30:49.020 temperatures and you know so that's a you know quite an arcane bit of knowledge that is unlikely to be

00:30:53.980 your biggest piece of the jigsaw but it could be the piece that makes a difference and it it's quite

00:30:59.100 often the the small jigsaw pieces are the ones that give us the confidence to then actually bring some

00:31:05.400 other ones in so a good example might be i say to people you know if you feel lost and you're

00:31:10.280 starting to get that quite normal natural feeling of panic start seeing if you can work out north or

00:31:15.800 south from temperature just start feeling two sides of a rock or two sides of a tree and what happens

00:31:20.980 is probably you know nine times out of ten there isn't a big enough temperature difference to give

00:31:25.480 you a really strong fix on direction you're not going to feel two sides and go ah that's so much warmer

00:31:30.460 that's definitely south off we go but actually what it does do is it kicks your brain into the

00:31:34.960 it gets it away from panic into a kind of i'm not totally out of control here i've got some

00:31:40.140 information and it and the second you start doing that the number of times i've done that and i've

00:31:44.420 spotted something on the ground or nearby and you very quickly go from that feeling down you're

00:31:49.780 feeling like you're falling down into the sort of value of panic you suddenly get pushed back up to

00:31:54.000 this feeling of like this might not be easy but i can do it one of my favorite chapters was the

00:31:58.200 chapter on the sky like a blue daytime sky because i think it's something we take for granted

00:32:03.140 and also i liked it because i was able to finally i know what to tell my kid when he asked me why is

00:32:09.200 the sky blue it's one of those things you you learn when you're in elementary school or primary school

00:32:14.260 and then you forget as an adult um but what are some things that people take for granted about a blue

00:32:19.420 daytime sky and how can we use that information that we take for granted to get our bearings in the

00:32:25.460 world yeah it's it's a it's a good example of how you know our brains never idle it's it's taking

00:32:31.400 in stuff all the time but we've in the modern lifestyle we've kind of shifted that focus so we

00:32:36.280 now we now see a new email popping into our inbox the way an ancient person would have noticed a slight

00:32:42.520 change in color in the sky so one of the exercises you know that doesn't necessarily give you a huge

00:32:47.940 amount of useful information but it starts to sort of show you what what you're perhaps not seeing is

00:32:51.940 that you know we go out and we see what we think is a pure blue sky if you go out there and look there

00:32:56.660 and scan all around the horizon and above you and in all directions not staring directly at the sun

00:33:01.080 because that's obviously not good for us but but in every other direction and we suddenly notice there

00:33:05.440 there are a hundred colors there you know the horizon is never pure blue unless you're the top of a

00:33:11.460 very high mountain um you know you're going to look out and you look at the horizon and you're going

00:33:15.740 to see a color that is is much closer to white than the than the blue of the sky above you

00:33:21.020 if it's the start of the day and you've got the sun uh in the eastern sky you'll notice an awful lot

00:33:26.240 of brightness um reflecting back from the west as well because the air actually reflects light back

00:33:31.940 at us so you start to realize that there's there's this kind of tapestry of shades and colors that have

00:33:37.500 always been there but we haven't necessarily noticed them and once you start tuning into that

00:33:41.460 you start to notice that hey wait a minute that little patch of whiteness up there isn't 1.00

00:33:47.740 explained by sunlight reflect or anything like that what is that ah that's the wispy candy floss

00:33:53.160 type cloud that's cirrus oh that's interesting well i better keep an eye on that because i know that

00:33:57.440 cirrus quite often comes at the leading edge of a of a front ah okay a few hours later there's a

00:34:03.880 little halo around the sun oh that's cirrostratus i know cirrus followed by cirrostratus the weather's

00:34:08.400 about to get is about to deteriorate so one simple exercise you know raises the awareness and it's the

00:34:15.020 raised awareness that makes us notice the the signs of of uh of coming change right and then also you

00:34:20.500 can um use some of this information to figure out if there are particles in the air like man-made

00:34:25.440 particles like pollution um the sky changes color or there's their smells are more strong because of

00:34:32.860 things like that yeah one of my favorites is the way temperature smell and and sound can can all

00:34:39.400 all connect um and when you uh if you wake up on in the morning and it's a sort of cool morning

00:34:45.420 quite common um at sort of full time and you just suddenly pick up a sort of musty smell in the air

00:34:51.160 it's like smoke but it's not that sort of powerful acrid smell you get if there's a fire near you

00:34:55.920 but you're just picking it up because again we've evolved to pick that that's a really important smell

00:34:59.920 in a in a sort of you know evolutionary context you go i wonder what that is if you then having

00:35:05.760 picked up that smell just have a really good listen and if you're in a place you know well

00:35:09.400 you'll start to notice you can hear things that you can't normally you'll also start to notice that

00:35:14.080 visually things are a little bit different at the horizon because what's happened is there's a

00:35:18.080 temperature inversion normally as we know the air gets cooler with altitude it's colder at the top

00:35:22.920 mountains and the bottom but occasionally a layer of warm air will sit on top of cold air and trap it

00:35:29.100 like a sandwich and we we're in that cold layer of the sandwich and sound and light is getting

00:35:34.500 trapped in there as well so we hear things loud things whether it's an airport a road a train

00:35:39.560 station an explosion you know something like that will travel much further under an inversion

00:35:45.080 but also in the horizon particularly anywhere near water you'll notice these wonderful optical effects

00:35:50.540 things like the there's an italian name for it called the fata morgana which is um it's a type of

00:35:55.600 fairy is is the idea but it makes things appear to float similar to sort of mirage but a little bit

00:36:01.020 different so what we start to realize is the smell we smell when we walked out in the morning

00:36:05.020 is actually connected to the way that we're hearing a train we can't normally hear yeah just part of

00:36:09.680 the the interconnectedness i love that and there's so much more we could talk about how many

00:36:13.980 you know things did you said you you've collected that you should look for out in nature so it was

00:36:18.240 some 800 in that book uh the lost art of reading nature signs there are there are 850 uh or or a few

00:36:24.500 more but the way my work generally goes is i've probably collected if i had to guess over 10 000

00:36:30.700 but my job as a writer um is is to act as quite a stern filter so pretty much every day i'm gathering

00:36:38.620 a few but it's it's it's the exception when it feels powerful enough that i'm still using it a month

00:36:44.560 later and if it's absolutely brilliant i'll find i'm using it three months or six months later and then

00:36:49.760 it makes it into a book so my kind of job is to go out there and i kind of you know it's like sort

00:36:54.740 of foraging for for clues and as i say there'll be a few each day but it's you know it's it's a good

00:36:59.880 week if if there are sort of you know two or three that that make it into the following week so it's it's

00:37:05.320 quite a brutal sort of pruning process to get the ones that are good enough for the book right

00:37:09.540 darwinian well i'm curious tristan um you know since you've been doing this um natural navigation how has

00:37:16.020 it changed the way you look at other parts of your life right like you know as in your personal

00:37:21.560 life whatever i mean is has that carried over sort of the observation and the mindfulness yeah i think

00:37:27.680 it's um i think i realized that um yeah i can probably go a day without being in in nature and

00:37:34.960 not not you know sort of notice it too much but if i go a whole week without it i definitely don't enjoy

00:37:40.480 that uh and i think it's we all i think exercise is a good analogy as well because i think we all

00:37:47.180 by trial and error find that there's a certain amount of exercise that we not just want but need

00:37:51.860 um some people get away with not very much some people feel they need to you know run a marathon

00:37:56.080 a week and it's it's it's you know i think fresh air is and and sort of nature immersion is is a

00:38:02.080 similar thing i think we all we all need some but it's not for me to say to say how much but in a

00:38:08.220 sort of slightly broader sense i think you know taking an interest in navigation and having a

00:38:13.600 bit of a fun with it can actually help in terms of decision making because i think one of the

00:38:18.060 things that we're all capable of and isn't isn't necessarily the strongest sort of side to all of

00:38:22.980 our characters is this feeling that you know life forces us down this trajectory and we're just going

00:38:27.820 to grumble about it and just sort of you know 10 years are going to go by where things don't go

00:38:31.440 exactly the way we want uh and it was just life dealing me you know you know bad card after another

00:38:36.460 and we all kind of know that's not true and yet we do all sometimes you know i'm no exception we

00:38:41.780 do all sometimes sort of find ourselves going down a you know a track in life as it were and you sort

00:38:46.480 of go this isn't going exactly the way i want and it's very tempting to sort of go well somebody forced

00:38:50.540 me down this track but actually the more interest you're taking navigation the more likely you are

00:38:53.720 to sort of go well maybe i should take a different one you know however difficult and sort of scary it

00:38:58.220 feels now this one isn't working i need i need to take a different one and i think i think yeah that's

00:39:03.220 that's for me navigation is starts when you choose what you started bed to get out of and it doesn't

00:39:07.300 finish until you've you've you've sort of found a path that's uh satisfying and edifying well

00:39:12.680 tristan this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about your book and your

00:39:16.120 work thanks brett there's lots of information on my website natural navigator.com there's a whole

00:39:20.360 section explaining you know the about the books i've written and uh and what they contain but there's

00:39:25.400 also you can also explore the subject through the different areas so people have different interests

00:39:30.040 you know you might want to look at the plants you might be more interested in the stars and

00:39:33.000 down the left hand side there's there's a menu so you can just go in through those and just have

00:39:36.720 a bit of a play and pick up a couple of techniques to to have a go at it's fantastic well tristan

00:39:40.380 gooley thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure thanks brett really enjoyed it all the

00:39:44.080 best my guest today was tristan gooley he's the author of the book how to read nature it's available

00:39:48.100 for pre-order on amazon.com also check out more about his work at natural navigator.com and when you

00:39:54.240 go there he's got information about everything you can pick any topic how to be guided by the sun

00:39:59.180 the moon stars plants animals you name it he's got articles on there all for free so go check it out

00:40:03.840 natural navigator.com also check out our show notes at aom.is slash read nature where you can find links

00:40:10.060 resources where you can delve deeper into this topic

00:40:12.000 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:40:27.720 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy

00:40:31.460 this show you've got something out of it i'd appreciate if you take one minute to give us a review

00:40:34.780 on itunes or stitcher it helps us out a lot as always thank you for your continued support and

00:40:38.520 until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly

00:40:41.440 you

The Art of Manliness - September 28, 2017

#343： How to Read Nature — Awakening Your Senses to the Outdoors

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