#343： How to Read Nature — Awakening Your Senses to the Outdoors
Episode Stats
Summary
Tristan Gully is the author of several books, including his latest, How to Read Nature, which delves into how we can navigate the wild without a map or compass. In this episode, he tells us how he got started with natural navigation and how he goes about rediscovering what was once common knowledge to our ancestors.
Transcript
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bratt mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast nature even if
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you're avid outdoorsman you likely take it for granted when you've seen one tree or one blue
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sky you've seen them all right well to those with well-trained senses natural surroundings
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can actually tell you a whole lot the leaves on a tree can tell you what direction you're headed and
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the smell of the air can tell you about the weather there are bits of knowledge and fascinating sign
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posts all around you out there in the wilds and my guest today has spent his life observing and
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cataloging these small details of nature and uses them to deftly navigate the wild without a map or
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compass his name is tristan gully he's the author of several books including his latest how to read
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nature and today on the show tristan tells us how he got started with natural navigation and how he
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goes about rediscovering what was once common knowledge to our ancestors we then dig into
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specific ways you can use nature to navigate or even know if there's a storm coming soon after
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listening to the show you're never going to look at trees the same way again i guarantee it and when
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you're done listening to the show besides checking out trees go check out our show notes at a1.is
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all right tristan gully welcome to the show thanks for having me on so you have an interesting title
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you are a natural navigator what is a natural navigator and how did you become was this something
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when you knew you wanted to be when you were a kid it was a really gradual process i was um i was a
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restless kid i'd see a hill and think it might be more interesting at the top than the bottom and
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i'd be standing on a lake thinking it might be more fun on the other side and it was pretty gradual the
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hills became mountains the lakes became oceans and i i don't know the exact moment when i realized that
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navigation was the was the key to the sort of you know fun that i wanted and i've since discovered that
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in every journey we take of any description you're either a navigator or a passenger and there's
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nothing wrong with being a passenger but life's a bit more fun if occasionally you think right i'm
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gonna be the navigator this time and that's that's i think the kind of bug i got even before i knew
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what the word navigation meant and the journey's got a bit bigger bolder a bit more ambitious a little
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bit more um risky at times and then there was another realization probably in my mid-20s when i
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appreciated that the scale of the journey wasn't actually determining how much fun or satisfaction
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i was getting i was um i sometimes taking on journeys of you know thousands of miles and doing some some
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quite challenging navigation but i get to the end of them and i think i'm not convinced that was any more
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exciting than than what i was doing as a 10 year old and it it was a it's a frustrating feeling and
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then i realized wait a minute i'm just staring at you know electronics and maps and stuff like that
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and so i tried something different i'd come across the idea you can find your way using nature and i
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just tried to find my way across some some woods and a one mile journey suddenly felt it was amazing
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being transported back as a as an adult to that feeling of excitement you can have as a kid
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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
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pursue this natural navigation thing so you don't use compass maps it's just looking at nature to to
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orient yourself yeah it's it's the view i take is that absolutely everything outdoors is part of a map
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and compass and i mean literally everything you know if you want if you want to you can fire a few
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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
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it's it's not about precision it's about getting a better feel for where we are and how we can get to
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where we want to be um if if all we want is the most accurate fastest way of getting somewhere
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the natural navigation isn't very often the solution um so yeah pretty pretty much everything
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from stuff you can see in the sky to stuff on the ground things in the water you know it's it's all
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it's all can be used as a as a map or compass and and my life's work has been about understanding
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that that better and what kind of journeys have you gone on using just natural navigation the vast
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majority of my journeys are a mix of all types of navigation um i've i've flown solo and sailed
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single-handed across the atlantic and it's actually illegal to fly without using the instruments to
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make it safer everybody will be pleased to hear so in that situation it's more it's more a case of
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natural navigation adds a layer on knowing that the sun rises in the northeast in the middle of summer
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you know means that the bright glare above the ice um you know up in uh up in greenland and places
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like that is is the the brightness is coming from where it should be if that makes sense
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so it's a lot of natural navigation is a jigsaw you're taking pieces so it doesn't actually matter
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what you're using it's the layers you add to it so quite often i will you know i might walk into a
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wild place using a map and compass and then just stick them in the bottom of a backpack and find my way
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out without using them i never recommend people leave everything at home because you know there's a
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difference between relying on stuff and staring at it the whole time and knowing it's there if you
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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
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quite small a small number of them are are big um but you can just get so much satisfaction from
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you know literally five miles of natural navigation will feel like a major expedition i guarantee it
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and how did you uncover these these methods you know this way of looking at the world because
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it sounds like this was once common knowledge amongst in humanity at one point before the map
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and compass and all these devices that we have so how have you uncovered or rediscovered these
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these uh insights into natural navigation well i've been really lucky because i'm not very good at
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focusing on one thing for very long periods and it turns out the natural navigation is a collection of
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pretty much all human experience so there's there's astronomy there's there are wonderful cultural
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sort of uh treasure trove so there are techniques you can find in in the ancient greek myths uh a
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disuse found his way across the mediterranean by keeping arctos the bear constellation on his left
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that's a northerly constellation so that's that's how he managed to keep going east so things like that
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they're an inspiration i might not use that exact method i'll use perhaps more contemporary version of
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it but it gives me ideas of how i can do things and then i'll discover you know a method of using a
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tree i've never thought of by reading the latest academic article in a in a in a journal like nature
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so i'm combining something from thousands of years ago with something that was published perhaps 24
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hours ago um astronomy one minute botany the next geology the day after that and as i say it's it's you
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know the world needs specialists the world needs people who focus on just one thing and become the
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best in the world at a small niche within astronomy but i couldn't do that i i love the fact that it
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sort of it allows me to be um sort of intellectually promiscuous i can kind of you know i can i was out
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there looking at fungi this morning and seeing if they were going to help me on my on my journey whereas
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you know tomorrow it might be the way the clouds help and are there still pockets of humanity that
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still rely on nature to navigate yeah the mostly the um indigenous communities in in remote areas are
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using this they all have their own unique view of navigation there's no human culture on earth
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where navigation isn't an integral part of life and i should probably expand on that a little bit
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because my view of navigation is when we wake up in the morning and decide which side of bed to get
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out of that's the start of navigating as far as i'm concerned there's a there's quite a popular sort
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of perception that navigation is kind of a sort of niche technical skill and you need bother less
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than one percent of the people in the world but unless you're planning to stay still for your whole life
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you're a navigator so so these are skills everybody needs and within indigenous communities you know
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some of them will be nomadic uh and a large part of their life is taken up with with natural navigation
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wisdom so i i spent some time with some some nomads uh some tuareg in the sahara and the way they they
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can read detail in their landscape and this is quite a common theme people people get used to their
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own patch so wherever we live in the world we notice any slight change in our landscape you know
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if you live in the center of a city if a shop closes and another one opens you notice it whereas
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somebody lives in a wild area might not notice that but if you go to their wild area if a tree starts
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becoming less healthy they notice it but but the city person might not so out in the desert until you're
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used to it every single patch of sand looks quite similar and then you realize the tuareg are just seeing
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you know just such such subtle differences just stand out to them so they are seeing a map in in
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what to us appears sort of you know sort of homogenous just just sand everywhere and that so
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those you know there are cultures all over the all over the world i spent some time with the diak in
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borneo and instead of using sand they're using the way water flows so their concept of direction is all
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to do with the way rivers you know the water flows and gradient the inuit like they can look at snow
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and figure out where they're at even though everything looks exactly the same yeah that's
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a great example and that's the sort of thing that i think somebody who's not familiar with
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these sorts of techniques might think wow that's just that's impossible that's kind of that's a
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weird thing that you know one society has spent their life focusing on therefore they can do it but
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actually it's quite simple because whenever the wind blows over any surface on earth it doesn't matter
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whether you're in the middle of a city up in the arctic in the middle of the ocean the middle of a
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desert in in a rural area the wind the way i put it is the wind leaves footprints so everywhere on
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earth has trends prevailing winds winds that come from certain directions more often than others
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and they will leave marks and it's just getting to know the marks in your area the simplest possible
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technique which applies pretty much all over the world is that the wind will create shapes where
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there's a shallower angle on the direction the wind has come from and a steeper angle on the side
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the wind is going towards so all you have to do is is however you do it there are lots of different
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ways of doing it but how do you do it you work out where the prevailing winds are in your part of the
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world and then you find these shapes it's the shape of waves swell in the middle of the ocean which
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allows the the pacific islanders to find land that that you know technology would struggle to find
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it's it's the way ice is shaped it's the way sand dunes are shaped it's the way trees are shaped
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and you know right down to sort of little little bits of dust in in towns you get these shapes
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everywhere well it's crazy you know and you said earlier that if you're in it all the time you'll
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notice that blitz i think most of our people who are listening to this podcast they might live in a
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city a suburb so they're well acquainted with that that scape of life what's the mindset shift that
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needs to occur so they can start noticing things in nature is it just like how do you get to that is
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it just a matter of spending more time in nature well the one of the big tips uh i'd i'd want to
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give your listeners is this is not a an either or thing what i'd recommend is before you go to the
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technology or whatever you you're going to use to answer your question of how do i find or what
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direction is something just have a go at answering it yourself and the philosophy is it doesn't matter
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if you're wrong and unless you're sort of you know running sort of an hour late for a you know
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the most important meeting in your life most of us can spare 20 seconds so those 20 seconds you
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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
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i'm just gonna have a bit of fun here i reckon okay i've just been i've just been keeping track
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of the fact that the clouds moving this way before i got on the subway and i'm now i've now popped out
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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
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where the clouds go so my best guess is i need to go down that street and then you turn to the
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technology and more often than not what what it says is you're not 100 right but you're you're not
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you're not wrong either and that that's the beginning of quite a lot of fun because you
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suddenly realize that it's doable and yeah we don't have to be too hard on ourselves we're not
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you know we're not trying to become become you know like sort of a desert nomads in the space of a
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day or two another really fun way into it is just randomly you know you could be looking out of an
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office window and you just sort of go which way am i looking and you can try and answer it north
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south east or west and you go right well how am i going to answer it again it doesn't matter if
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you're wrong doesn't matter if you're wrong the first 15 times you do it you'll notice things
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that nobody else is noticing you'll notice that's weird the birds always flying past that way or
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you know i can tell that that you know the sun must have been there you know i can't see it
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because it's cloudy because that whole part of the street has dried it rained two hours ago that part's
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dried you have a go you might be 30 degrees out or something it doesn't matter you've noticed a
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whole load of things the way an indigenous person would do and you keep doing it and then you you
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surprise yourself quite nicely because the moment comes where you're you're high-fiving yourself
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because you get it right and those examples you gave like you didn't have to get out into the
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you know quote-unquote wild so you could do this from your office yeah absolutely and and one of the
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things that a technique people would use in the wild which we can actually quite often the techniques
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that are used in the wild the ones we'll borrow um and and tweak slightly to use in a city so a good
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example is um academics believe that the way the pacific islanders found new land was by in a very sort of
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casual way studying bird migration patterns now we can use that all over the world but actually a nice
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city version is human beings migrate and we sort of do it on a daily and a daily pattern so whereas it
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might be a six six month cycle out in the middle of the pacific in a city if you're completely and
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hopelessly lost if you go against the flow of people in the morning or with the flow of people
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late in the afternoon you're going to find the nearest transport hub the nearest station
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now am i not that might not form a perfect map for you but it's the start of a process where you go
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okay not everything's random in fact very little is random so you're just starting to put one small
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piece in the jigsaw and starting to get a picture of what's going on around you that's fantastic
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well in your book how to read nature and the lost art of reading nature signs you give what i love
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about you give these specific i don't know tips i would i would call them or um mental models i guess
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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
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some specifics because as we were i was talking telling you um before we started recording was
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after reading this book whenever i go outside now i'm looking at my surroundings in a completely
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different way because i know these things that i should be looking for so it's okay with you can
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we go through some of this stuff because i think it's just really fascinating yeah i'd love to okay
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well let's talk about like you start off talking about like kind of big picture getting the lay of
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the land and you recommend using a method called sorted which is an acronym what is the sorted method and
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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
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zooming in starting with a very broad focus uh s-o-r-t-e-d sorted so we start with s for shape
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uh and every landscape uh we're in whether it's urban or wild we're going to find there are there
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are one or two quite dominant uh geographical influences and just once we tune into them
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we notice there's a slightly higher bit of ground and then there's a valley and then there's a river for
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example once we've tuned into that we've actually started to form quite an important map
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as i say the the diac in borneo um can find their way they can walk for literally days just on that
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idea so it sounds very vague and perhaps not hugely practical but once you start to think okay i know
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which side of the river i am and then you start to relate to where various things are compared to that
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then you've just started to form a very basic sort of map the o um i i you know i use the word
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ologies so in terms of the soil and various other things but it's really a very broad brush way of saying
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what what is in the ground um so if we know for example we're in a very sort of acidic area you're
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going to get a certain type of landscape you'd expect you know if there's loads of granite around
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you've got a certain type of moorland if you've got very alkaline soil you expect different types
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of wildflowers so if we just start to put two pieces together we start to think okay i know i'm on
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slightly higher ground i know that the river is out there somewhere and i know i'm on this type of
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soil so i'll be able to tell before i hit the river that there are these certain types of plants
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because i've noticed when the soil is this type i get bright purple flowers before i hit water so
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so we've just started to put another couple of pieces together next thing are for roots so pretty
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much every landscape we're likely to find ourselves in the one or two exceptions there will be some sort
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of human footprints there'll be paths there'll be tracks there'll be roads there'll be rail and they
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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
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in the hard hardest possible place so we find there's a relationship between those and the hills
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and the rivers and things like that and so we're just starting to put another layer on top of that
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then we've got t for tracks that's just starting to tune into who else is out there we all know what
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sort of human footprints look like in our various different sort of footwear but we start to pick up on
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what the other animals are doing um and again all these pieces start to fit together because
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the relationship between the high ground the water and what the animals are doing is is all
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integrated there's very very little that's random out there um ears for edges so whenever we're
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walking along a path or a track we get a huge concentration of things happening at the the edge
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of any track or path we're walking down it's just one of the one of the sort of laws of nature that
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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
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then a woodland the vast majority of action is going to happen where the the fields touch the
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woodland and it's the same as tron paths you get the greatest number of plants just at the edge of
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the path not in the middle and not way out into the wilderness either because it's just that mix
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mix of things happening and then d is a kind of capsule it's details you know in in the lost art of
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reading nature signs there are 850 things to look for so d is kind of we kind of feel we've got the
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broad brush we know the shape of the land we know we know what it's made of we know where the kind
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of rivers are we know all of these sorts of things we know what animals are there uh and then d is just
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kind of like okay i'm now going to try and work something out just from the the size of the leaf in
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front of me that's awesome i love that this mental model is fantastic because i've been using it in the
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past few days and it's crazy sort of the the map you can develop in your brain just by using
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the sorted method it's it's phenomenal let's get into some of these details because not only is can
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it be useful to navigate i just think it's interesting and it's made me more appreciative
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or more mindful of my environment so for example one of my favorite chapters was on how to use trees
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to figure out you know which direction is which yeah this is a really good example of how
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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
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it's it's and and and and actually underpinning it all is just some very very simple sort of nature
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um all green plants are responding to the the elements in particular things like light and wind
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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
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it's giving us most of its light we find that of course green plants you know the light is a huge
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influence you know it's it's their breakfast breakfast lunch and dinner they they can't function
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without it so actually it'd be really odd if any green plants were symmetrical if you're getting
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most of your energy from one side of the sky as it were you know it doesn't make any sense to be
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symmetrical so we find that the shape of a tree is influenced by that we find there are more and
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bigger branches on average on the southern side of trees particularly deciduous trees some of the
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pines as well like the scots pine but the next thing we find is that actually if we if we zoom in a
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little bit the shape of the branches is shaped by light as well because the branches are growing
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towards the sunlight which means on average they will grow more vertically on the northern side
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and closer to horizontal on the southern side and what that means is if you're looking from one side
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of the tree you get what i call the check effect you just imagine sort of drawing a we call them ticks
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in the uk i think you guys call them checks you just draw a check in the air you have that sort of
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vertical side to it and then a horizontal side to it and that it's a subtle effect um in truth most of
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the stuff that i write about in research is obvious when you know to look for it but actually sits just
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below most people's sort of sort of noticing radar if you know what i mean because it's it's there are
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certain things everybody sees everybody can count the rings on a on a you know a tree trunk that's been
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been felled that stuff that's still obvious but most of the stuff is really easy to see when you know
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to look for it if we then think of the leaves in um in deciduous trees uh we have two types of leaf
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we have the sun leaf and the and the shade leaf on the north side of the tree the leaves aren't
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getting enough energy so the tree has a trick it sends a sort of chemical message to the leaves
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basically says you need to sort your act out and what it does is the leaves change from sun leaves
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to shade leaves they grow bigger darker in color and thinner so what we find is the leaves on the north
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side of a tree are bigger and darker in color than the ones on the south side of the tree and
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there are you know you get more roots on the side of a tree that the the wind comes from so once you
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know the prevailing wind direction in your area and it's the sort of thing you only need to sort of
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work out once it'll cover you know thousands of square miles most likely you can see that these
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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
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on yourself because i'm about to give you the answer but you can do it on a a friend and
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just ask them to draw a tree and then ask them to draw the roots what you'll find is they draw the
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roots underground but actually if you go out there and have a look at trees the vast majority of trees
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you can see the roots where they where they come up from the ground joining the trunk of the tree above
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the ground and these are called guy roots and they they are there like guy ropes on a tent to stop the
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tree uh being pushed over by the winds so it's logical almost all this stuff is just it's almost like
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nature's common sense it's like well if you're going to have roots to stop a tree blowing over
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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
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
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