#563： How to Develop Your Nature Instinct
Episode Stats
Summary
Our ancestor was able to navigate long distances, find water and even predict the weather simply by looking at their environment. Today, my guest says we still have this nature instinct inside of us, and with a little practice we can revive it. His name is Tristan Gooley, and he's an outdoorsman and author. And his latest book is The Nature Instinct, which helps us learn to find direction, avoid danger and even guess Nature s next move faster than thought.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast our ancestor was
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able to navigate long distances find water and even predict the weather simply by looking at
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their environment my guest today says we still have this nature instinct inside of us as little
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practice we can revive it his name is tristan gooley he's an outdoorsman and author and his
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latest book is the nature instinct learn to find direction since danger and even guess nature's
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next move faster than thought today on the show we discuss how humans have the ability to simply
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look at something in nature and immediately see direction time or weather conditions while modern
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humans have lost this ability tristan makes the case that with some practice anyone can relearn it
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we then discuss how learning how to read nature intuitively makes us more engaged with our
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surroundings and able to see more significance in our environment tristan then shares signs to look
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for in nature to anticipate animal behavior find water and predict the weather after listening this
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show you'll never look at squirrels the same way be sure to check out our show notes at aom.is
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slash nature instinct tristan joins me now via clearcast.io
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all right tristan gooley welcome back to the show thanks for having me so we had you on
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last year a few years ago it's been it's been a while to talk about your book the lost art of
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reading nature signs you got a new book out the nature instinct relearning our lost intuition for
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the inner workings of the natural world how is this book the nature instinct different from some of
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the previous work you've done and writing you've done about reading nature and like how to figure out
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directions just by looking at a hill what's what's the big idea in the nature instinct what i've done is
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taken my my general approach which is that everything outdoors is a clue and just looked at the ones
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that if we practice using them a little bit give us the sort of reading of our our surroundings that
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i believe our ancestors had and which i think i see in indigenous cultures to this day so the idea is
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so like before and i we went through some of the tips and sort of the ideas in the last podcast like
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you could the idea in the previous book is like okay you look for the way the tree a tree is pointed
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or the the leaves are growing on a tree and you can deduct the direction that you know which ones
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which way is north south east west and the nature instinct the idea is you're going to skip beyond
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the deliberation where you can just look at the tree and see north yeah what happened was a couple of
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things happened to me very personally i was i was teaching people how to use what i call the check effect the
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the shape of the branches to find north and south in a tree they they grow close to horizontal on the on
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the south side close to vertical on the north side and lots of people in a group could see this but one
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or two people couldn't and i thought that's odd and i showed them a couple of techniques to to spot these
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things like if you squint it filters out small details and you you see the bigger shapes and patterns
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and that and we got there in the end and around about that time i was going on a car journey
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and a tree announced direction to me now there isn't language that does this sensation perfect
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justice because as as we'll discover as we discuss it this is stuff that's going on quite deep in our
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brains deep in a historical sense what used to be called our lizard brain and this was all quite
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strange and new to me but but i i had noticed quite a few years ago that very occasionally i would see
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direction in the night sky so what happens for a lot of people is you can show them how to to spot what
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we call the plow over here in the uk and what what you guys call the big dipper and you use that to find
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the north star and it's it's very methodical and it's straightforward and once you've done it a few
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times it's it's it's almost child's play but what happens after after doing it maybe a few times a week
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over a month there comes a moment where you will see north in the night sky just in the way that
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you can see direction in trees and this this book the nature instinct is really the patterns that allow
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us to do that which i mean if if you talk to any indigenous people and you say to them how did you do
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that thing in the wild and it can be pretty much anything what you tend to find is that they find
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extremely hard to describe what they're doing in the same way that if you ask somebody who's been
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riding a bike for 20 years or driving a car for 50 years how do you do that the it's quite hard to
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articulate because it's so deep within our brain psychologists call it the difference between fast
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and slow thinking and the the nobel prize winner daniel kahneman wrote a wrote an excellent book looking
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at that area mainly to do with with economics but exactly the same type of psychology applies and
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from my perspective applies more originally to the outdoors so this is what the nature instinct is
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it's this idea of intuition this fast thinking and it's all about pattern recognition and it's something
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that you develop with just more and more experience like an example you gave of sort of in modern
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westerns you know civilized cultures of the firemen who went to a building and he went in and without
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really even knowing the literally you know analytically why they need to get out of that
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building he said we got to get out of here and as soon as they got out of there the building collapsed
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yes and again the the mechanics of that were very hard for that individual to explain immediately
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afterwards but but after because it was such a key thing and and the people researching it the
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psychologists researching it really needed to know what had happened that i i believe they spent quite a
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lot of time getting to what was actually quite quite simple clues and it was to do with temperature from
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below and sound not quite fitting the expected pattern so they were expecting a fire on the same level as
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them and that would present certain sounds and certain temperature sensations and those two things
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didn't match which gave a feeling not a it's not a sort of it's not like a sort of crystal clear report
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that comes through that says the fire's not on this level it's below you it's much more that sensation
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that we've all had which is something's not right and in a fire fire situation something's not right
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is akin to the the survival feeling that we can all get if you're outdoors and there are dangerous
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predators in the area you're much more likely to be tuned to those sorts of signs but we do we
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haven't we haven't lost any of this ability we just we're just focusing it in different areas so
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if you're in a car and the the driver in front of you drives at all erratically that's something we
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pick up these days but it's exactly the same exactly the same skill and that's why you know
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teenage drivers insurance costs more than people have been driving for for 20 years is because we
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you know when you've been driving 20 years you you spot these patterns and and when you're you know
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perhaps 18 you're you're too busy thinking about indicate you know signal maneuver that type of stuff
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so this idea of pattern recognition you know if you're exposed to it long enough and frequently
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enough you can start seeing things or noticing things that other people wouldn't notice so
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going back to this you know indigenous cultures uh i've read about and i think you've talked about
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them as well as like inuit for example that live in the north of canada like they they can navigate
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like these basically ice deserts right that everything everything's white everything kind of pretty much
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looks the same but because they are so familiar with that environment they can like recognize like
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different types of snow and say well if this snow this type of snow means this and so i'm going to keep
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going that way and they can do that because they've been exposed to it but if i were to be dropped off
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in the you know the great white north of canada i would get lost probably because i couldn't make
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those distinctions yes and those patterns are global so exactly the same techniques being used on
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the snow by the inuit can be used by pacific island navigators on the ocean and there are documented
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examples of captains of of ships of modern ships perhaps a sailing vessel being asleep they're they're
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off watch they're they're down below decks and they'll just suddenly come up on deck and say
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something's not right and what's happened there is is they their body and their senses have become
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tuned to the the point of sail the direction the boat is taking over the water and exactly the same
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thing happens with with sleds over ice and and that sort of thing where a certain rhythm develops and
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if you if you change direction the sound the feel absolutely everything changes it might not be
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it's only dramatic if we make it dramatic so a lot of developing the sense has to do with what we
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what we care about and our brain has evolved to attach more value that's what we mean by care so
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if for example you've had a problems with burglars in your in your neighborhood you're going to
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attach a lot more weight and importance to strange sounds outside your home it's exactly the
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same process to any of these things if the if the sound of the snow underneath you means you've
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changed direction and the last two or three times that happened you got lost and spent 24 hours
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trying to find your way home we're automatically going to start to care more about those sorts of
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sounds and rhythms the the the actually noticing them is very very easy it's just a case of deciding to
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do that attaching a importance to it and then our brain will do the rest because we have evolved
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for our brain to take shortcuts it's part of our survival toolkit none of us and none of our ancestors
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would have survived well i should say none of us would exist because our ancestors wouldn't have
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survived if they had to go through a very slow methodical approach every time if they had to sort of
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sit there and sort of scratch their head and go well the the kind of feel of this snow and ice or the
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feel of this water or even the feel of these sand dunes has changed a little bit now let me try and
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remember what does that mean that that you know in in evolutionary terms that's a that's a bit of a
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non-starter because there'll be another species that gets there a bit quicker and that's really what we
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mean by survival in a broader evolutionary sense so all of us every human being has this ability to
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look at a tree for example and see direction but we have to relearn it how long does it take
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what what does it require to relearn this skill like do you have to be in the wilderness for
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extended periods of time or is this something you can sort of gradually pick up as you walk around
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your suburban neighborhood yeah absolutely i mean i'm i'm most motivated as a researcher and then a
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writer by patterns that are as global as possible as accessible as possible and with quick meaning so
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there are there are plenty of these sorts of signs that i come across that are just too rare and they're
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they're of less interest to me and they they don't tend to make it into the book so what i really like
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is there's where a sign is can be used in this way to give us a fast sense an intuitive reading of our
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surroundings i i promote it i call it a key so a sign will give us meaning but we might have to think
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about it a little bit whereas a key is something that if we do practice looking at it so in the examples
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we've been talking about the key there is is is something i nicknamed the ramp so what we find is
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that the wind shapes ice sand dunes water waves even rocks to have two distinct angles a shallow
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gradient on the windward side and a steeper gradient on the downwind side now that can apply to a sand
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dune that might be 200 meters high but it might apply to a ripple of ice that is is only half an inch high
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exactly the same physics is taking place it can apply to grass so instead of thinking we have to go
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and join the inuit or we have to go out to the pacific we can actually see a very very similar pattern
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in in grass that's exposed to the wind it's there's a shallow gradient on the side the winds come from
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a slightly steeper gradient on the downwind side and we just practice looking at that and this is where
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the caring comes in because if you just sort of look at it go ah whatever your brain's not going
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to invest the energy needed for the shortcut but if you actually spend even quarter of an hour
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walking using just the shape of grass your your brain does uh i'm sort of giving it a little bit
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more of a sort of character here but it's sort of effectively sort of goes oh so you're serious
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about this oh okay well if you're serious about this and this is actually mean something to you then
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yeah sure we'll make this happen for you and and that's what we tend to find is that i find out on
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expeditions the sun is the very first example the sun is due south in the middle of the day but on a
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longer expedition i might be aware that it is passing through southeast at a particular moment and i can
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do calculations of sort of saying okay we're before the september equinox therefore it's going to rise
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seven degrees north of east etc etc etc all very in psychology terms all very slow thinking but by the end
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of the first day and certainly into the second day of an expedition my brain's sort of saying to me
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please don't do any more of that slow laborious thinking it's it's it's really grinding me down
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here i'll just give you the answer that's what it feels like i mean psychologists would probably have
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slightly better terminology than i'm giving you there but that's that's what it actually feels like
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is you can you can just sort of go you can look at a landscape and you can go it's this way
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and similar to how we were saying sort of earlier if somebody said how do you know that
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you'd have to sort of take a step back and go well i kind of know what my brain's doing but i
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wasn't i wasn't witness to every single calculation that it did there well you talk about in the book
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um hunters people who hunt have probably experienced this i know i have the few times i've gone hunting
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when i've first went out there i really didn't know what's going on but then i had a guide who started
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showing me things like okay look at the tree you can see the rut marks look at the grass you can see
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this is where they're bedding down and after a while after like i think two days i could just i
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just start i just started seeing the things and i knew what it meant i didn't have to think about
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it anymore and it happened pretty fast yeah that's that's a great example where care is part of it
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historically hunting and obviously for for some communities to this day hunting is the difference
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between life and death therefore the the care is there and you know if you are trying to
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effectively outcompete an animal uh even if you've got the help of a weapon of some sort
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if you notice that certain ear movements precede flight behavior like a deer heading off at speed
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that that is that is the difference between success or failure kill or not success or not and survival or
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not and in in the nature instinct what i what i try and do is is break down every single one of
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these behaviors so from the face to the tail and then looking at it's basically body language
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broken down into the the typical behavior responses so to give you an example if we know that prey animals
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are going to lift their heads when they sense something in their environment that they're not
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entirely comfortable with we can tell when they sense us so that's that's you know the sort of thing
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i think most people would probably pick up intuitively without having to do an awful lot of thinking
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about it but if we then give a little bit more attention to head tail behavior we find in certain
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species like squirrels their next move is quite often predicted by by tail flicking that that is a sign
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to their their conspecifics that i'm aware of something out there and i may be about to go into flight
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behavior so that's that's one very simple key but but so much of this this sort of reading of
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environment is about bolting two quite simple keys together to come up with something which to the
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novice seems you know quite advanced but it but it isn't really so in the case of a squirrel if we if
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we put the peak as i call this kind of awareness behavior that the key is it my name for it is is is the
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peak the head is lifted we know if we take one step towards that squirrel the next likely thing is going
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to be flight behavior and with each animal we can just look at that key okay the flight key where is
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it going to go in the case of a squirrel it's going to head to a tree we all know that but not any tree
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it's probably going to head to a tree that has a network so it might run past it might dart past three
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isolated trees and then go up the tree that has branches that interconnect with with other trees
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so you can now see there are two what a lot of this stuff is common sense with hindsight but is
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again hidden in plain sight so if we tap a friend on the shoulder and say you see that squirrel there
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when we take two steps towards it it's going to get up onto its haunches it's going to sit up
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we're then going to take two more steps it's going to run past those three trees it's going to go up
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that tree there we're going to add another key here it's going to go into its refuge behavior which
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is around the back of the tree we start to put these things together and and that's that's i think at
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the point where sort of people go wait wait a minute this is like this is weird this is kind of
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this is like a sixth sense or something it's not it's simple keys put together in the case of some
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of the deer i see near me very similar behaviors we just kind of tweak our knowledge of the key for
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that species fallow deer are going to go uphill towards trees now if you predict somebody we're
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going to walk towards that deer it's going to lift its head then it's going to run in that direction
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towards those trees simple simple pieces simple keys put together but they lead to something which
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we've lost but is is very retrievable so you know we're listening to this people like okay great
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you can develop the ability to you know look at a tree or look at an animal predict its behavior
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instantly like all right so what i mean what do you think the benefit is for people to relearn this
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nature instinct well it's not entirely practical i i never with any of my work i never start from the
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sort of point of view that life will life will stop if you don't learn this stuff so my view is
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always about uh experience connection and the the feeling of engagement and the the again quite hard
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to describe positive feelings that come from that there's a there's a big movement all over the western
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world at the moment towards mindfulness but actually when you quite often when you pin people down and
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say what do you actually mean by mindfulness and if we add to that people go time in nature is good
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for us lots of studies are saying time in nature is is helps our mental and our physical health
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but but for me and i think a lot of people out there if somebody sort of taps me on the shoulder
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and says you should spend time in nature and you should be more mindful i hope i'm polite enough not to
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not to say what i'm thinking but you know my initial thoughts to people saying that that's that's lovely
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nebulous concepts it's it's largely meaningless but if we tickle our brain by giving giving ourselves
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something to look for which when when we practice looking for it it then leads to this intuitive
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sense and with that quite a positive feeling it's i sometimes liken it to feeling like your brain has
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been tickled do you know that feeling when you're you're either reading a a detective novel or you're
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watching a a murder mystery type thing on tv or in a film and you solve the mystery so you've seen
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the clue oh it's it's death i love that feeling yeah and that that is the positive feeling that
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feeling comes and in fact that whole genre of murder mystery puzzles like crossword sudoku any
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puzzle you name all of that i firmly believe comes because our brain has evolved to get pleasure from
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solving puzzles and originally that was to reward us for understanding what's going on around us so
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instead of finishing a crossword and thinking i feel good i feel clever about that we we can use
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similar parts of our brain to actually go i think it's about to rain because the birds are making that
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that sound again and we get a very similar we've solved a similar puzzle we're just using our brains
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for what they originally evolved to do and my take is that they uh they they they doubly reward us for
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it because they our brain sort of saying finally you've worked out what i'm for
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and in my experience one of the things that learning how to read nature like this on a
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intuitive level it's like it's empowering i think oftentimes for people in the western world
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there's a disconnect from them in the environment and so there's this idea that the the environment or
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the wilderness is scary random etc and there are parts of it's just sort of random right but as you
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highlighting the book there is a there's like a system going on that if you know where to look
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you can see the gears working in the background and once you see those gears moving it feels good it
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feels feels good to know that information yeah i think that's a good point because i think in
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in a lot of areas of knowledge people feel that there are experts and there's this kind of
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cavalistic knowledge and i'm excluded that group over there good luck to them they know it i don't
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and there's this kind of invisible wall between us but there are different reasons for that feeling
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but one of the big ones is actually language i i feel very strongly that people shouldn't be put off
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any engagement with nature because of vocabulary and what so often happens and we've all probably
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had this experience is you walk with somebody and they start spouting off names oh there's that
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wildflower and there's that and and that bird is it this species or that species and when people talk
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like that if you're not if you're not if that's not your lingo there's an instant feeling of exclusion
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whereas the thing i so often say to people i feel really strongly about is that there is no right
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name for anything so for this sort of engagement and to develop these sorts of skills language is right
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at the end of what's necessary and you can do the whole lot without any names at all so we notice
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we notice colors we notice shades we notice shapes we notice patterns basically those are important and they
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are to me a global language so the you know in a tribal historical sense you could notice the body
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language of of a bird and know that it's about to take off and then you could debate for another three
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weeks what the right name for that bird is it doesn't change the body language or the fact that
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you've sensed that it's about to take off yeah and i think one thing you talked about too is that
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there's this i guess conservationists one of the sort of metrics they use to determine whether
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someone's in tune with their environment is the number of species plant species they can list
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in their local area you say that that's actually like you said earlier it's not a useful metric
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because you might know the names but then that's that's as far as your knowledge goes of that fauna or
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animal yeah absolutely and i think we can if we look at young children they they don't take to names
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terribly quickly but they learn things like stinging nettles and around where i am things like brambles
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things like that that anything that causes pain is a lesson that we learn a lot a lot more quickly than
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the names there are you could be a hundred common names for a wildflower and i i get into these
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conversations where where people say ah but that's why we use the latin and i i always end up sort of
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saying something along the lines of you know the the latin's not so strong in the heart of borneo and they know
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their plants really well so there's there's no there is no right name but there is recognition
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of patterns and that is a different sort of language another benefit that i think comes from
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relearning this nature instinct that i that i got from your book but also just my experience learning
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how to do this stuff is that it gives life more meaning you know there's there's a sort of people
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in writing there's a crisis of meaning in modern life but i think the nature instinct is is one small
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way where you can inject more meaning into your life like you can look at the world and say that
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means something and i don't know there's something fulfilling about that thanks yeah and i i that's
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certainly one of the one of the things i i hope to achieve with this book and for me the tipping
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point personally which is now something i try and share because i think it is it can be the difference
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for people deciding whether to give this a go or not is very early on in my life i mean i i sort of got
00:23:57.660
the point where i i go oh well i hope that i hope it's not a cloudy day because then i can see the sun
00:24:02.840
and i can use the sun to find direction or i hope i can see the stars or you know by the time i was in
00:24:07.240
my early 20s the the collection of signs was probably big enough that i was hopeful of finding one out
00:24:12.240
there but there came a point where my whole philosophy changed which is now everything outdoors is a sign
00:24:18.300
literally everything has some meaning because nothing is random and that stretches all the way from
00:24:25.320
the wildest parts of of planet earth where we might be noticing that a sudden spike in the number of
00:24:32.940
insects is telling us that there's water nearby all the way up to urban examples you know shops are not
00:24:39.300
random somebody's somebody spent a lot of money to put a store somewhere so although i'm focusing on
00:24:44.680
nature the philosophy applies to literally everything the the the color of the side of a building is trying
00:24:51.540
to tell us you know something about the amount of light and moisture which in turn is telling us
00:24:55.760
direction the way people move is analogous to the way animals move it's not random any one individual
00:25:01.900
might decide to go somewhere strange on any particular day but a group of people moving along a street
00:25:07.260
you know late in the day heading towards a station that sort of thing is not a it's not a random
00:25:12.080
not a not a random pattern so i um you know feel feel free to to fire it back at me but i've i've yet
00:25:19.520
to have an example given to me where i'm left thinking there is no sign in that sometimes it takes
00:25:25.500
me a while to work out what it might be and sometimes the the sign isn't you know super powerful but there
00:25:31.320
is i believe a sign in everything and once once people sort of become open to that sort of idea then
00:25:37.260
every minute outdoors becomes very very exciting because instead of it being a thought or if i'm
00:25:43.320
really lucky i might find one of these things that that you know tristan is calling a sign it quickly
00:25:48.520
becomes everything is a sign so if i look at something the thought is what what is it and and then you've
00:25:53.620
got your kind of murder mystery feeling yeah it causes you to engage with the world in a more
00:25:58.340
active way and i like i really like that feeling another kind of high level concept that you talk
00:26:04.620
about the nature instinct that i thought was interesting was this idea and i've never heard
00:26:08.440
of it before but it was this idea of the umwelt or umwelt do i pronounce it i think it's german
00:26:12.940
or umwelt what is that and what insights can it give us to developing the nature instinct it was one of
00:26:20.040
the great joys of this book for me because i had to be pointed out to me that the word author
00:26:25.240
is connected to the word authority i i wasn't a genius when it came to that little quite simple
00:26:30.460
connection but nobody gets commissioned to write a book unless they've proved that they are expert
00:26:35.960
enough in that field that the world will have an interest in what they have to say about it uh which
00:26:40.180
is again sort of slightly obvious stuff but the great joy in writing any book is you you enter it
00:26:46.160
with with a level of knowledge which is high enough to justify the exercise from a publisher's point of
00:26:50.880
view and a reader's point of view but but you always learn little little things along the way and that that
00:26:56.060
is so so exciting from my perspective and this this i don't know the exact way to pronounce it i'm
00:27:00.840
guessing as it's it's german i think it's umwelt but i i my german is is is close to non-existent so
00:27:06.440
forgive me anyone if i've got that wrong but i've only ever seen it in print but i'm very familiar with
00:27:11.820
the concept now which is that this is the the landscape and the environment as perceived by another
00:27:18.660
creature which initially doesn't sound that exciting but when when scientists start looking into this
00:27:25.540
some really quite bizarre stuff starts to happen because quite often we can see creatures that
00:27:31.640
have much much smaller bodies and brains than us doing things that look a bit smarter or certainly
00:27:38.120
a bit more able than us the most beautiful example and it's one i cite in the book which is
00:27:42.740
the jackdaw going for a locust so the bird sees sees the locust and the locust is is moving in front of
00:27:50.920
the bird and the bird identifies a meal but this the locust has evolved to notice the predator there
00:27:58.020
notice that moving is is not the right thing to do so the locust freezes which is another of the keys
00:28:03.840
and what is interesting is at this point the bird ceases to be able to see the locust that the the meal
00:28:11.220
has become invisible not in a sort of it's no longer sort of grabbing my attention as in as far as
00:28:17.380
scientists can tell that actual that there is no vision there anymore it's it's it's almost like
00:28:22.460
somebody's turned off the lights and this is why we see freezing so much in nature and why we we
00:28:27.820
instinctively quite often do it if if we're if we're walking through a woods hopeful of seeing some
00:28:32.720
wildlife and we catch something moving around us it's quite it is quite a sort of intuitive um instinctive
00:28:40.560
response to to freeze but the more the more time we think about the umwelt the more we realize that
00:28:46.880
it's not that animals sense the world like us they just don't have language like english attached to it
00:28:53.140
it's they are sensing an entirely different world and that's where i mean when i'm when i'm spending
00:29:00.300
time with if we come back to squirrels if you wave your your hand and imitate the motion of a squirrel's
00:29:06.840
tail it feels you know hilarious because you you feel like a bit of an idiot and i you know my my
00:29:12.980
family and i were were over in um in new york recently and we're in central park and i was having
00:29:17.880
a conversation inverted commas with a squirrel there by waving my hand and beneath the beneath the sort of
00:29:24.060
ridiculousness of how how it looks there is something genuine going on there because the squirrels i can't
00:29:30.300
tell exactly what's going on in their brain but they definitely they are definitely picking up the sign
00:29:34.760
and and sort of hardwired into them that motion has a meaning now my my take is that that meaning
00:29:41.300
doesn't quite fit with the rest of what they're seeing as in they're not thinking well that's a
00:29:45.660
big squirrel they're thinking i'm getting a sign with meaning and that is an instant fast understanding
00:29:51.440
of what's going on somewhere but they're then probably getting the subsequent hang on a minute
00:29:55.440
type feeling as well because because the other signs and patterns aren't aren't fitting it so through
00:30:00.900
through and well the little the little insights we get into how different creatures are experiencing
00:30:05.580
their environment allows us to have more faith and believe a little bit more that these signs do
00:30:12.700
actually work that way i mean another example is prey prey animals like rodents have to be very very
00:30:19.380
sensitive to birds overhead because birds prey can sweep down and and it's uh it's game over so they
00:30:26.740
they are tuned to the shape of birds they don't relate to birds in the in the same way that you
00:30:32.160
know bird lovers around the world might do they might buy a guidebook and they might say ah so so it's
00:30:36.660
got kind of it's got bars on its tail feathers and it's it's the ring around its eye is this color that's
00:30:42.840
a very very slow human way of looking at a bird a prey animal will just will just sense a shape and if
00:30:50.300
that shape is of a bird with a short neck it's gone instantly it's not as far as science can tell it is
00:30:56.720
not the rabbit or the road or whatever it is is not sitting there thinking you know it looks a little
00:31:01.720
bit like predator a which can kill me but but not at all like predator b which is safe okay if it looks
00:31:07.600
like the one that can kill me i'm gonna i'm gonna head off all it does is sense a shape and that is
00:31:12.700
its umvel that is its its whole reading of the of the sky it's as far as we know and my best guess
00:31:18.860
is it's not even sensing a bird it's sensing a shape which means run for cover all right so
00:31:23.500
we've been talking about this stuff on a high level we talked about the benefits of developing
00:31:28.120
this nature instinct i think there's a big case for it not in a practical sense i think a lot of
00:31:31.780
people think i'm going to learn this stuff so if i ever get lost in the woods yeah it'll probably come
00:31:36.760
in handy but i think most on a day-to-day it just gives more meaning enriches your life but to develop
00:31:42.820
that nature instinct we have to learn these things deliberately first and then they with practice
00:31:48.100
they become uh encoded so it just becomes like instinct so let's talk about some of these
00:31:52.500
patterns we've mentioned a few throughout we talked about the ramp that we see in nature in different
00:31:58.060
places that indicate wind direction what are some of your other favorite signs in nature that once
00:32:05.200
once people notice that know that they're there notice that they're there they start seeing them
00:32:09.000
everywhere and it tells them information about their world one of my favorites is is is a good one for
00:32:15.260
people learn early on because it stacks the odds in your favor if you've ever had that experience of
00:32:20.060
of going outdoors into a into a rural or semi-wild environment and thinking ah this is going to be
00:32:26.640
this is going to be a feast for the senses i'm going to see a lot of wildlife and a lot of nature
00:32:30.040
happening and inverted commas and then after 20 minutes you get that feeling it doesn't seem to be a lot
00:32:34.860
going on here well that's it's partly because because we're there and we haven't necessarily settled
00:32:39.600
into the landscape so there's a lot of a lot of a lot of creatures out there watching us to see
00:32:43.640
our next move but there are things we can do to massively stack the odds in our favor and there
00:32:48.140
are the keys i call the edge is a nice simple one so in ecology terms it's known as an ecotone where
00:32:56.000
two landscape types meet each other we get a massive spike in activity and when i when i first sort of
00:33:02.800
was getting familiar with this sort of concept i i thought well i've i've noticed that happening but i
00:33:06.920
don't really understand why i mean what's the logic and it's a lot of it's very simple maths if you've
00:33:11.840
got woodland meeting a field open country for the sake of argument you might have 50 species that
00:33:18.220
that need woodland to live in and 50 species that need an open field to live in and there might be
00:33:23.320
50 species that need both there is only one part of the landscape where you're conceivably going to
00:33:27.960
see 150 species now if we imagine those are 150 prey species we're going to see a spike in predator
00:33:35.120
activity and indeed what we tend to find is these edges are are sort of mini highways we've got the
00:33:41.140
prey moving up and down them we've got the predators focusing on that as well so instead of
00:33:45.960
us scanning if we if we had you know in gambling terms you know if if you know we absolutely have
00:33:52.160
to see something happen and we've only got five minutes in our landscape there's no point scanning
00:33:56.400
the whole landscape the animals aren't doing it and they're the ones that really know you focus on
00:34:00.780
the edge and then we add another key which which i nicknamed the muzzet which comes for an old
00:34:05.480
medieval english hunting term which is the little sort of the mini highways through undergrowth
00:34:11.320
so if we imagine we got a wood touching a field there will be some undergrowth there perhaps some
00:34:16.440
some thorns some brambles some things like this there will be lots of animals that can't pass freely
00:34:21.440
through that so and anything bigger than a you know a small rodent is not going to be you know
00:34:26.360
moving randomly through that so we find these sometimes they're tunnels but they always exist so it's not
00:34:32.280
like you have to go and search for search for half an hour you'll be able to see one within a couple
00:34:35.680
of minutes quite easily so then we've got the edge where most activity is happening and this little
00:34:41.320
kind of highway which is it's a funnel it's a pinch point it's where stuff you know is going to happen
00:34:46.600
the final key we add is time so we we will again the the maths is really quite quite clear here we're
00:34:54.320
going to see a lot less in the middle of the day and the middle of the night than we are at dawn
00:34:58.240
and dusk the the reason for that is that in evolutionary terms prey has its best chance of
00:35:04.300
in sense terms outwitting predators when it's half light because the nocturnal animals can't use their
00:35:10.440
incredible night vision you know animals like owls in in twilight are at no greater advantage whereas
00:35:16.300
the middle of the night of course they they've got their trump card in the middle of the day a lot
00:35:20.720
of prey animals are extremely vulnerable to being that well lit so so if we add the the time i mean
00:35:26.100
in the book i give it this this sort of funny nickname uh the clepsydra which is just a greek
00:35:30.380
name for water clock because i'm just trying to get people to think about time differently and then
00:35:34.260
there what i what i'm encouraging people to do is think about the edge think about the muzzet the
00:35:39.560
little highway through it and then think about not clock time but for example sunset time and then
00:35:46.120
relate that to weather so if we put all the pieces together we find it's been very dry for five days
00:35:51.420
there's been a little bit of rain we normally see activity around about 20 minutes past sunset but
00:35:57.220
because it's been dry and there's been a little bit of water we've got used to the idea that that
00:36:00.280
brings our our nature clock forward a bit so we're actually going to head out at sunset and suddenly you
00:36:05.520
see sort of four animals out there whereas if you'd had an hour just looking at the whole landscape at
00:36:11.560
the wrong time you'd see nothing i think one nature instinct that people would like to develop is the
00:36:17.280
ability to predict weather right that sort of old you know maybe their great grandfather grandfather's
00:36:23.000
like i could i feel like it's going to rain today like they could feel it in their bones
00:36:26.800
is that really a thing are there like signs that you can look for in your environment that can help you
00:36:32.340
figure out if it's going to rain or if it's going to be snowy if it's going to be foggy
00:36:36.220
have you found any tried and true signs yeah definitely and um i've uh i've been doing a lot of
00:36:41.960
research in this area and there are are examples in in all my books about the weather and it is
00:36:47.600
quite a good example of the the big quite dramatic signs all the way down to really very subtle stuff
00:36:54.640
that that takes focus and experience so the biggest one is is like so many so many nature signs is related
00:37:01.340
to to to wind if we just make a habit of noticing where the winds come from in very very crude terms
00:37:07.640
you know we don't even have to sort of we're not sort of getting to the point of sort of saying
00:37:11.080
it's south southwest or anything like that it can just be you know i've noticed it comes from
00:37:15.700
between those two buildings or it comes over you know that that mast on a hill or something like
00:37:20.580
that we just okay that's where it's coming from now and then you know a few hours later we go wait
00:37:26.200
a minute it's changed that is the sort of thing that our ancestors that was that's just in neon lights
00:37:33.040
in in terms of indigenous and i believe ancient reading of landscapes it's just but just for the
00:37:38.700
simple reason that if the if a if a constant wind you know shifts direction by more than 20 or 30
00:37:45.800
degrees uh something's on its way because again nothing is random so that is that is a very strong
00:37:52.080
indication that a frontal system may be about to go through then we move to uh quite bold uh cloud
00:37:59.320
signs so what i encourage everybody to do is is cheat early on wait till you've had a really good
00:38:06.200
one of those quite sort of well established good weather times it doesn't have to be summer at all
00:38:11.520
but where you had sort of four days of of blue skies light winds you start to get that feeling that
00:38:17.720
this is going to last forever we know we know it doesn't and then and then cheat you know when you're
00:38:23.160
when you're early on this is about going from from slow to fast thinking what what we do is we we say
00:38:28.420
okay right i'm gonna i'm gonna cheat i look at the forecast okay so i can see that there's a front
00:38:32.220
coming through and it's due to start raining in in 24 hours i'm just going to scour the sky
00:38:37.940
you know every once every hour over the intervening time and you start to notice wispy sort of candy
00:38:44.340
floss you know cirrus clouds and then and then there's this kind of almost like sort of thin
00:38:50.080
frosting cirrostratus cloud comes that's the one that gives us halos and things like this
00:38:54.600
and like so many of these things to start with we're having to kind of sell the concept to ourselves
00:38:59.720
i'm going to convince ourselves that this stuff works okay well i'm feeling a a slight pickup in
00:39:04.060
the wind i've noticed that it it's backing it's moves anti-clockwise it was it's no longer over
00:39:08.460
that that tower it's now coming from over that that wood and wait a minute it was completely blue
00:39:14.040
three hours ago and i'm now seeing little bits of you guys call it something else we call it
00:39:18.680
candy floss i forgot what it's called in uh over there but but um what is the name oh cotton candy
00:39:25.080
yeah yeah thanks and then we do that a few times cheating and then and then we do start to go okay
00:39:32.280
this stuff works and then the the next thing that happens is is that we we just we move from knowing
00:39:39.380
what's going to happen with a bit of help from modern forecasting to actually just sort of going
00:39:44.440
oh the weather's about to change and then when it does we get that huge you know solve solve the
00:39:50.600
mystery type feeling and so that's pretty much i wouldn't say it's with us automatically forever
00:39:55.660
then but like so many of these things is that you've got to you've got to push it push it up the hill a
00:40:00.100
little bit and then it just rolls down the other side you have a lot of fun with it and some of my
00:40:03.840
other favorite signs were animals and looking at their behavior to help you figure out about your
00:40:08.900
environment um so this idea that i think cows they typically stand north south typically it's not
00:40:15.980
always but oftentimes so that's one way you can look at animals to find direction the other one is
00:40:21.400
like using animals to find water if you're out in nature you can look at how animals are behaving and
00:40:27.040
see oh there's probably water in that direction yeah there are two ways of coming at this there's the
00:40:33.020
the kind of very broad map making sense which is all plants and animals have a relationship with water
00:40:38.660
we we know that but if we if we kind of finesse that a little bit and think okay every animal will be
00:40:45.220
found within a certain radius from water and this this applies to every every animal and every
00:40:50.420
landscape type so if we think for example of if we turn it on its head the pacific island navigators
00:40:56.720
know how to find land by using birds which will only fly a certain distance from land so there are
00:41:02.000
certain birds like the frigate for example that will be found 70 miles from land and others like
00:41:05.700
the boobies that will be found 40 miles from land down to the turns that 20 miles from land
00:41:10.100
if we come back and flip that back on a land sense the land becomes like the ocean and the water
00:41:15.800
becomes like the island as in certain animals will only be found a certain distance so within within
00:41:21.400
birds what we find is that the corvid family get a lot of their moisture from the from the animals
00:41:27.140
they feed off so they can be found a very long distance from water but seed feeding birds and other
00:41:32.860
birds woodland birds like um pheasants things like that they they they indicate water really quite close by
00:41:39.040
because they won't range far from it but the the general principle is more important than the detail
00:41:43.860
here because the details can change all over the world but the the patterns and the principle doesn't
00:41:48.860
which is every single animal you see is telling you something about the proximity of water
00:41:52.580
so that that's kind of one one very general principle that works all over the world and and has
00:41:57.620
saved people's lives on countless occasions the next is to look at individual behaviors and see if you
00:42:04.100
can can refine that map so see if you can go from thinking okay there's definitely water within half
00:42:09.140
a mile of here to thinking okay where is it and there we we can start to look at things like flight
00:42:14.120
patterns so a lot a lot of birds will will fly to fly to water in the morning or at the end of the day
00:42:21.100
and i i won't claim that i can do this routinely although i do keep trying but there are documented cases
00:42:28.280
of people like the aboriginals in australia being able to tell whether a bird is coming from water or to
00:42:32.980
water by the way it alights on trees so if we kind of think of um you know birds even even big birds
00:42:40.060
don't don't weigh much uh it doesn't take much water to weigh them down so a bird that's coming
00:42:45.680
from water will will effectively hop from trees because it's it's it's lugging a great big tank of
00:42:51.000
water with it whereas whereas a thirsty bird that hasn't had any in the morning will take a direct
00:42:55.900
flight path straight past all the trees in the direction of the water or or whatever it's whatever it's
00:43:01.140
resting on so yeah there's a lot of signs and as you said the the key what you're what you're hoping
00:43:06.020
people will do is they'll deliberately learn these things by reading it in your book but then get out
00:43:10.240
there and practice it so they get to the point where they can just see something and they know what
00:43:15.460
that means without having to think about it yeah and i i all of my books i i try and uh give people
00:43:22.220
a real wealth a large number i mean there are 52 keys in the nature instinct but realistically i i think
00:43:29.880
of them slightly like characters in the sense that i can't predict who's going to get on with which one
00:43:34.760
if we kind of imagine we're going to a big house party and there are 52 people in it the chances are
00:43:40.100
you know you can get on really really well without with a handful of them and a few of them are going
00:43:44.240
to leave you cold it's the same with these sorts of signs and each of us has our our interests from
00:43:49.380
our experience and our preferences so all i'm really doing is is is a you know hopefully a good
00:43:54.880
introduction to 52 of these these these keys and then it's it's down to the individual to sort of say
00:44:00.960
that that really resonates with me that's what i like i am really into birds therefore i'm going to
00:44:06.580
look for this particular key and then a relationship forms it makes me sound incredibly dysfunctional
00:44:11.340
talking about sort of signs and nature as sort of characters and i i i don't always manage to stop short
00:44:16.860
of describing them as friends because it does feel like that when you there are certain ones that
00:44:21.560
it doesn't take long before you recognize them and you kind of feel a you feel a kinship it's kind
00:44:26.520
of yes there you are and and because it's such a positive feeling that that that all sounds weird
00:44:31.540
until you actually uh get out there and try it and then you'll know exactly what i mean yeah it's
00:44:35.500
always weird until you do it then it's not weird anymore well tristan where can people go to learn
00:44:40.160
more about the book in your work uh thanks i have a website natural navigator.com and i've been
00:44:45.580
adding examples to that for for over a decade now so there are hundreds in there there's information
00:44:50.980
about about my about my books i've i've written a few now and again i i sort of i'm coming at the
00:44:57.380
same idea from from from different angles i'm i'm on a lot of the sort of uh usual social media things
00:45:03.240
twitter instagram facebook but yeah i just encourage people to you know pick one or two keep you know
00:45:10.180
having having a bit of fun with them and then instead of it feeling like you're you're having to put
00:45:14.240
stuff in you you just start getting given stuff back and that's a that's a really lovely moment
00:45:19.380
well tristan gooley thanks so much time it's been a pleasure thanks so much brett i really enjoyed our
00:45:23.940
chat thank you my guest there was tristan gooley he's the author of the book the nature instinct
00:45:28.460
it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find out more information
00:45:32.000
about his work at his website natural navigator.com also check out our show notes at
00:45:36.140
aom.is nature instinct we find links to resources we can delve deeper into this topic
00:45:40.640
well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at art of manliness.com
00:45:52.400
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00:45:55.940
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