The Art of Manliness - #563： How to Develop Your Nature Instinct

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast our ancestor was

00:00:12.060 able to navigate long distances find water and even predict the weather simply by looking at

00:00:16.340 their environment my guest today says we still have this nature instinct inside of us as little

00:00:20.500 practice we can revive it his name is tristan gooley he's an outdoorsman and author and his

00:00:24.740 latest book is the nature instinct learn to find direction since danger and even guess nature's

00:00:29.160 next move faster than thought today on the show we discuss how humans have the ability to simply

00:00:33.460 look at something in nature and immediately see direction time or weather conditions while modern

00:00:37.940 humans have lost this ability tristan makes the case that with some practice anyone can relearn it

00:00:42.280 we then discuss how learning how to read nature intuitively makes us more engaged with our

00:00:46.200 surroundings and able to see more significance in our environment tristan then shares signs to look

00:00:50.220 for in nature to anticipate animal behavior find water and predict the weather after listening this

00:00:54.560 show you'll never look at squirrels the same way be sure to check out our show notes at aom.is

00:00:58.940 slash nature instinct tristan joins me now via clearcast.io

00:01:02.900 all right tristan gooley welcome back to the show thanks for having me so we had you on

00:01:19.700 last year a few years ago it's been it's been a while to talk about your book the lost art of

00:01:25.600 reading nature signs you got a new book out the nature instinct relearning our lost intuition for

00:01:31.420 the inner workings of the natural world how is this book the nature instinct different from some of

00:01:37.560 the previous work you've done and writing you've done about reading nature and like how to figure out

00:01:43.620 directions just by looking at a hill what's what's the big idea in the nature instinct what i've done is

00:01:49.480 taken my my general approach which is that everything outdoors is a clue and just looked at the ones

00:01:57.460 that if we practice using them a little bit give us the sort of reading of our our surroundings that

00:02:04.740 i believe our ancestors had and which i think i see in indigenous cultures to this day so the idea is

00:02:12.780 so like before and i we went through some of the tips and sort of the ideas in the last podcast like

00:02:17.080 you could the idea in the previous book is like okay you look for the way the tree a tree is pointed

00:02:22.700 or the the leaves are growing on a tree and you can deduct the direction that you know which ones

00:02:28.940 which way is north south east west and the nature instinct the idea is you're going to skip beyond

00:02:33.880 the deliberation where you can just look at the tree and see north yeah what happened was a couple of

00:02:39.200 things happened to me very personally i was i was teaching people how to use what i call the check effect the

00:02:45.880 the shape of the branches to find north and south in a tree they they grow close to horizontal on the on

00:02:51.060 the south side close to vertical on the north side and lots of people in a group could see this but one

00:02:55.680 or two people couldn't and i thought that's odd and i showed them a couple of techniques to to spot these

00:03:00.980 things like if you squint it filters out small details and you you see the bigger shapes and patterns

00:03:07.640 and that and we got there in the end and around about that time i was going on a car journey

00:03:12.800 and a tree announced direction to me now there isn't language that does this sensation perfect

00:03:21.160 justice because as as we'll discover as we discuss it this is stuff that's going on quite deep in our

00:03:26.960 brains deep in a historical sense what used to be called our lizard brain and this was all quite

00:03:33.660 strange and new to me but but i i had noticed quite a few years ago that very occasionally i would see

00:03:39.960 direction in the night sky so what happens for a lot of people is you can show them how to to spot what

00:03:45.460 we call the plow over here in the uk and what what you guys call the big dipper and you use that to find

00:03:50.260 the north star and it's it's very methodical and it's straightforward and once you've done it a few

00:03:54.420 times it's it's it's almost child's play but what happens after after doing it maybe a few times a week

00:04:01.760 over a month there comes a moment where you will see north in the night sky just in the way that

00:04:06.840 you can see direction in trees and this this book the nature instinct is really the patterns that allow

00:04:14.200 us to do that which i mean if if you talk to any indigenous people and you say to them how did you do

00:04:20.280 that thing in the wild and it can be pretty much anything what you tend to find is that they find

00:04:25.840 extremely hard to describe what they're doing in the same way that if you ask somebody who's been

00:04:30.540 riding a bike for 20 years or driving a car for 50 years how do you do that the it's quite hard to

00:04:36.700 articulate because it's so deep within our brain psychologists call it the difference between fast

00:04:41.780 and slow thinking and the the nobel prize winner daniel kahneman wrote a wrote an excellent book looking

00:04:47.760 at that area mainly to do with with economics but exactly the same type of psychology applies and

00:04:54.840 from my perspective applies more originally to the outdoors so this is what the nature instinct is

00:05:00.520 it's this idea of intuition this fast thinking and it's all about pattern recognition and it's something

00:05:05.040 that you develop with just more and more experience like an example you gave of sort of in modern

00:05:10.640 westerns you know civilized cultures of the firemen who went to a building and he went in and without

00:05:18.620 really even knowing the literally you know analytically why they need to get out of that

00:05:23.140 building he said we got to get out of here and as soon as they got out of there the building collapsed

00:05:27.600 yes and again the the mechanics of that were very hard for that individual to explain immediately

00:05:33.640 afterwards but but after because it was such a key thing and and the people researching it the

00:05:38.940 psychologists researching it really needed to know what had happened that i i believe they spent quite a

00:05:44.260 lot of time getting to what was actually quite quite simple clues and it was to do with temperature from

00:05:50.000 below and sound not quite fitting the expected pattern so they were expecting a fire on the same level as

00:05:56.140 them and that would present certain sounds and certain temperature sensations and those two things

00:06:02.260 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

00:06:09.220 that comes through that says the fire's not on this level it's below you it's much more that sensation

00:06:13.720 that we've all had which is something's not right and in a fire fire situation something's not right

00:06:20.180 is akin to the the survival feeling that we can all get if you're outdoors and there are dangerous

00:06:26.440 predators in the area you're much more likely to be tuned to those sorts of signs but we do we

00:06:31.340 haven't we haven't lost any of this ability we just we're just focusing it in different areas so

00:06:35.080 if you're in a car and the the driver in front of you drives at all erratically that's something we

00:06:41.760 pick up these days but it's exactly the same exactly the same skill and that's why you know

00:06:46.580 teenage drivers insurance costs more than people have been driving for for 20 years is because we

00:06:51.200 you know when you've been driving 20 years you you spot these patterns and and when you're you know

00:06:56.120 perhaps 18 you're you're too busy thinking about indicate you know signal maneuver that type of stuff

00:07:01.520 so this idea of pattern recognition you know if you're exposed to it long enough and frequently

00:07:06.080 enough you can start seeing things or noticing things that other people wouldn't notice so

00:07:10.200 going back to this you know indigenous cultures uh i've read about and i think you've talked about

00:07:14.720 them as well as like inuit for example that live in the north of canada like they they can navigate

00:07:21.220 like these basically ice deserts right that everything everything's white everything kind of pretty much

00:07:26.580 looks the same but because they are so familiar with that environment they can like recognize like

00:07:33.560 different types of snow and say well if this snow this type of snow means this and so i'm going to keep

00:07:39.280 going that way and they can do that because they've been exposed to it but if i were to be dropped off

00:07:43.840 in the you know the great white north of canada i would get lost probably because i couldn't make

00:07:48.120 those distinctions yes and those patterns are global so exactly the same techniques being used on

00:07:54.340 the snow by the inuit can be used by pacific island navigators on the ocean and there are documented

00:08:01.000 examples of captains of of ships of modern ships perhaps a sailing vessel being asleep they're they're

00:08:09.320 off watch they're they're down below decks and they'll just suddenly come up on deck and say

00:08:13.480 something's not right and what's happened there is is they their body and their senses have become

00:08:19.780 tuned to the the point of sail the direction the boat is taking over the water and exactly the same

00:08:25.520 thing happens with with sleds over ice and and that sort of thing where a certain rhythm develops and

00:08:30.300 if you if you change direction the sound the feel absolutely everything changes it might not be

00:08:35.920 it's only dramatic if we make it dramatic so a lot of developing the sense has to do with what we

00:08:42.360 what we care about and our brain has evolved to attach more value that's what we mean by care so

00:08:48.860 if for example you've had a problems with burglars in your in your neighborhood you're going to

00:08:54.540 attach a lot more weight and importance to strange sounds outside your home it's exactly the

00:08:59.420 same process to any of these things if the if the sound of the snow underneath you means you've

00:09:03.420 changed direction and the last two or three times that happened you got lost and spent 24 hours

00:09:08.260 trying to find your way home we're automatically going to start to care more about those sorts of

00:09:13.140 sounds and rhythms the the the actually noticing them is very very easy it's just a case of deciding to

00:09:20.320 do that attaching a importance to it and then our brain will do the rest because we have evolved

00:09:25.900 for our brain to take shortcuts it's part of our survival toolkit none of us and none of our ancestors

00:09:32.260 would have survived well i should say none of us would exist because our ancestors wouldn't have

00:09:36.240 survived if they had to go through a very slow methodical approach every time if they had to sort of

00:09:41.520 sit there and sort of scratch their head and go well the the kind of feel of this snow and ice or the

00:09:47.620 feel of this water or even the feel of these sand dunes has changed a little bit now let me try and

00:09:51.880 remember what does that mean that that you know in in evolutionary terms that's a that's a bit of a

00:09:57.340 non-starter because there'll be another species that gets there a bit quicker and that's really what we

00:10:01.960 mean by survival in a broader evolutionary sense so all of us every human being has this ability to

00:10:07.700 look at a tree for example and see direction but we have to relearn it how long does it take

00:10:15.700 what what does it require to relearn this skill like do you have to be in the wilderness for

00:10:20.220 extended periods of time or is this something you can sort of gradually pick up as you walk around

00:10:25.300 your suburban neighborhood yeah absolutely i mean i'm i'm most motivated as a researcher and then a

00:10:32.000 writer by patterns that are as global as possible as accessible as possible and with quick meaning so

00:10:40.560 there are there are plenty of these sorts of signs that i come across that are just too rare and they're

00:10:47.500 they're of less interest to me and they they don't tend to make it into the book so what i really like

00:10:51.780 is there's where a sign is can be used in this way to give us a fast sense an intuitive reading of our

00:10:58.520 surroundings i i promote it i call it a key so a sign will give us meaning but we might have to think

00:11:04.540 about it a little bit whereas a key is something that if we do practice looking at it so in the examples

00:11:09.460 we've been talking about the key there is is is something i nicknamed the ramp so what we find is

00:11:15.040 that the wind shapes ice sand dunes water waves even rocks to have two distinct angles a shallow

00:11:22.700 gradient on the windward side and a steeper gradient on the downwind side now that can apply to a sand

00:11:30.080 dune that might be 200 meters high but it might apply to a ripple of ice that is is only half an inch high

00:11:36.400 exactly the same physics is taking place it can apply to grass so instead of thinking we have to go

00:11:42.920 and join the inuit or we have to go out to the pacific we can actually see a very very similar pattern

00:11:48.280 in in grass that's exposed to the wind it's there's a shallow gradient on the side the winds come from

00:11:54.400 a slightly steeper gradient on the downwind side and we just practice looking at that and this is where

00:11:59.600 the caring comes in because if you just sort of look at it go ah whatever your brain's not going

00:12:05.040 to invest the energy needed for the shortcut but if you actually spend even quarter of an hour

00:12:10.340 walking using just the shape of grass your your brain does uh i'm sort of giving it a little bit

00:12:18.200 more of a sort of character here but it's sort of effectively sort of goes oh so you're serious

00:12:21.440 about this oh okay well if you're serious about this and this is actually mean something to you then

00:12:25.040 yeah sure we'll make this happen for you and and that's what we tend to find is that i find out on

00:12:30.400 expeditions the sun is the very first example the sun is due south in the middle of the day but on a

00:12:36.320 longer expedition i might be aware that it is passing through southeast at a particular moment and i can

00:12:42.560 do calculations of sort of saying okay we're before the september equinox therefore it's going to rise

00:12:47.380 seven degrees north of east etc etc etc all very in psychology terms all very slow thinking but by the end

00:12:54.360 of the first day and certainly into the second day of an expedition my brain's sort of saying to me

00:12:59.440 please don't do any more of that slow laborious thinking it's it's it's really grinding me down

00:13:03.980 here i'll just give you the answer that's what it feels like i mean psychologists would probably have

00:13:08.280 slightly better terminology than i'm giving you there but that's that's what it actually feels like

00:13:12.160 is you can you can just sort of go you can look at a landscape and you can go it's this way

00:13:16.620 and similar to how we were saying sort of earlier if somebody said how do you know that

00:13:21.400 you'd have to sort of take a step back and go well i kind of know what my brain's doing but i

00:13:26.420 wasn't i wasn't witness to every single calculation that it did there well you talk about in the book

00:13:31.600 um hunters people who hunt have probably experienced this i know i have the few times i've gone hunting

00:13:38.000 when i've first went out there i really didn't know what's going on but then i had a guide who started

00:13:42.960 showing me things like okay look at the tree you can see the rut marks look at the grass you can see

00:13:47.960 this is where they're bedding down and after a while after like i think two days i could just i

00:13:53.180 just start i just started seeing the things and i knew what it meant i didn't have to think about

00:13:56.600 it anymore and it happened pretty fast yeah that's that's a great example where care is part of it

00:14:02.600 historically hunting and obviously for for some communities to this day hunting is the difference

00:14:08.560 between life and death therefore the the care is there and you know if you are trying to

00:14:15.200 effectively outcompete an animal uh even if you've got the help of a weapon of some sort

00:14:21.040 if you notice that certain ear movements precede flight behavior like a deer heading off at speed

00:14:28.580 that that is that is the difference between success or failure kill or not success or not and survival or

00:14:35.060 not and in in the nature instinct what i what i try and do is is break down every single one of

00:14:41.600 these behaviors so from the face to the tail and then looking at it's basically body language

00:14:47.820 broken down into the the typical behavior responses so to give you an example if we know that prey animals

00:14:57.400 are going to lift their heads when they sense something in their environment that they're not

00:15:02.320 entirely comfortable with we can tell when they sense us so that's that's you know the sort of thing

00:15:07.560 i think most people would probably pick up intuitively without having to do an awful lot of thinking

00:15:11.680 about it but if we then give a little bit more attention to head tail behavior we find in certain

00:15:18.100 species like squirrels their next move is quite often predicted by by tail flicking that that is a sign

00:15:24.580 to their their conspecifics that i'm aware of something out there and i may be about to go into flight

00:15:31.500 behavior so that's that's one very simple key but but so much of this this sort of reading of

00:15:36.460 environment is about bolting two quite simple keys together to come up with something which to the

00:15:42.340 novice seems you know quite advanced but it but it isn't really so in the case of a squirrel if we if

00:15:48.460 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

00:15:55.180 peak the head is lifted we know if we take one step towards that squirrel the next likely thing is going

00:16:00.580 to be flight behavior and with each animal we can just look at that key okay the flight key where is

00:16:07.020 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

00:16:11.280 it's probably going to head to a tree that has a network so it might run past it might dart past three

00:16:16.760 isolated trees and then go up the tree that has branches that interconnect with with other trees

00:16:22.340 so you can now see there are two what a lot of this stuff is common sense with hindsight but is

00:16:27.400 again hidden in plain sight so if we tap a friend on the shoulder and say you see that squirrel there

00:16:33.240 when we take two steps towards it it's going to get up onto its haunches it's going to sit up

00:16:37.520 we're then going to take two more steps it's going to run past those three trees it's going to go up

00:16:41.460 that tree there we're going to add another key here it's going to go into its refuge behavior which

00:16:46.460 is around the back of the tree we start to put these things together and and that's that's i think at

00:16:51.580 the point where sort of people go wait wait a minute this is like this is weird this is kind of

00:16:55.180 this is like a sixth sense or something it's not it's simple keys put together in the case of some

00:17:00.200 of the deer i see near me very similar behaviors we just kind of tweak our knowledge of the key for

00:17:05.340 that species fallow deer are going to go uphill towards trees now if you predict somebody we're

00:17:11.480 going to walk towards that deer it's going to lift its head then it's going to run in that direction

00:17:14.420 towards those trees simple simple pieces simple keys put together but they lead to something which

00:17:19.880 we've lost but is is very retrievable so you know we're listening to this people like okay great

00:17:25.900 you can develop the ability to you know look at a tree or look at an animal predict its behavior

00:17:30.780 instantly like all right so what i mean what do you think the benefit is for people to relearn this

00:17:38.040 nature instinct well it's not entirely practical i i never with any of my work i never start from the

00:17:46.140 sort of point of view that life will life will stop if you don't learn this stuff so my view is

00:17:52.540 always about uh experience connection and the the feeling of engagement and the the again quite hard

00:18:01.040 to describe positive feelings that come from that there's a there's a big movement all over the western

00:18:06.140 world at the moment towards mindfulness but actually when you quite often when you pin people down and

00:18:11.280 say what do you actually mean by mindfulness and if we add to that people go time in nature is good

00:18:15.880 for us lots of studies are saying time in nature is is helps our mental and our physical health

00:18:20.600 but but for me and i think a lot of people out there if somebody sort of taps me on the shoulder

00:18:26.540 and says you should spend time in nature and you should be more mindful i hope i'm polite enough not to

00:18:31.960 not to say what i'm thinking but you know my initial thoughts to people saying that that's that's lovely

00:18:37.100 nebulous concepts it's it's largely meaningless but if we tickle our brain by giving giving ourselves

00:18:43.600 something to look for which when when we practice looking for it it then leads to this intuitive

00:18:49.240 sense and with that quite a positive feeling it's i sometimes liken it to feeling like your brain has

00:18:55.120 been tickled do you know that feeling when you're you're either reading a a detective novel or you're

00:19:00.520 watching a a murder mystery type thing on tv or in a film and you solve the mystery so you've seen

00:19:06.380 the clue oh it's it's death i love that feeling yeah and that that is the positive feeling that

00:19:11.620 feeling comes and in fact that whole genre of murder mystery puzzles like crossword sudoku any

00:19:17.880 puzzle you name all of that i firmly believe comes because our brain has evolved to get pleasure from

00:19:25.380 solving puzzles and originally that was to reward us for understanding what's going on around us so

00:19:31.760 instead of finishing a crossword and thinking i feel good i feel clever about that we we can use

00:19:37.200 similar parts of our brain to actually go i think it's about to rain because the birds are making that

00:19:42.360 that sound again and we get a very similar we've solved a similar puzzle we're just using our brains

00:19:47.640 for what they originally evolved to do and my take is that they uh they they they doubly reward us for

00:19:53.720 it because they our brain sort of saying finally you've worked out what i'm for

00:19:58.220 and in my experience one of the things that learning how to read nature like this on a

00:20:03.660 intuitive level it's like it's empowering i think oftentimes for people in the western world

00:20:09.820 there's a disconnect from them in the environment and so there's this idea that the the environment or

00:20:15.980 the wilderness is scary random etc and there are parts of it's just sort of random right but as you

00:20:22.700 highlighting the book there is a there's like a system going on that if you know where to look

00:20:27.520 you can see the gears working in the background and once you see those gears moving it feels good it

00:20:34.680 feels feels good to know that information yeah i think that's a good point because i think in

00:20:39.880 in a lot of areas of knowledge people feel that there are experts and there's this kind of

00:20:45.300 cavalistic knowledge and i'm excluded that group over there good luck to them they know it i don't

00:20:50.460 and there's this kind of invisible wall between us but there are different reasons for that feeling

00:20:56.000 but one of the big ones is actually language i i feel very strongly that people shouldn't be put off

00:21:01.220 any engagement with nature because of vocabulary and what so often happens and we've all probably

00:21:06.960 had this experience is you walk with somebody and they start spouting off names oh there's that

00:21:11.160 wildflower and there's that and and that bird is it this species or that species and when people talk

00:21:16.120 like that if you're not if you're not if that's not your lingo there's an instant feeling of exclusion

00:21:20.960 whereas the thing i so often say to people i feel really strongly about is that there is no right

00:21:25.300 name for anything so for this sort of engagement and to develop these sorts of skills language is right

00:21:31.520 at the end of what's necessary and you can do the whole lot without any names at all so we notice

00:21:36.560 we notice colors we notice shades we notice shapes we notice patterns basically those are important and they

00:21:43.740 are to me a global language so the you know in a tribal historical sense you could notice the body

00:21:52.500 language of of a bird and know that it's about to take off and then you could debate for another three

00:21:58.420 weeks what the right name for that bird is it doesn't change the body language or the fact that

00:22:01.720 you've sensed that it's about to take off yeah and i think one thing you talked about too is that

00:22:05.980 there's this i guess conservationists one of the sort of metrics they use to determine whether

00:22:11.240 someone's in tune with their environment is the number of species plant species they can list

00:22:18.180 in their local area you say that that's actually like you said earlier it's not a useful metric

00:22:23.220 because you might know the names but then that's that's as far as your knowledge goes of that fauna or

00:22:29.400 animal yeah absolutely and i think we can if we look at young children they they don't take to names

00:22:36.420 terribly quickly but they learn things like stinging nettles and around where i am things like brambles

00:22:42.320 things like that that anything that causes pain is a lesson that we learn a lot a lot more quickly than

00:22:48.680 the names there are you could be a hundred common names for a wildflower and i i get into these

00:22:55.520 conversations where where people say ah but that's why we use the latin and i i always end up sort of

00:23:00.480 saying something along the lines of you know the the latin's not so strong in the heart of borneo and they know

00:23:04.960 their plants really well so there's there's no there is no right name but there is recognition

00:23:10.080 of patterns and that is a different sort of language another benefit that i think comes from

00:23:15.260 relearning this nature instinct that i that i got from your book but also just my experience learning

00:23:20.960 how to do this stuff is that it gives life more meaning you know there's there's a sort of people

00:23:26.500 in writing there's a crisis of meaning in modern life but i think the nature instinct is is one small

00:23:31.580 way where you can inject more meaning into your life like you can look at the world and say that

00:23:36.380 means something and i don't know there's something fulfilling about that thanks yeah and i i that's

00:23:41.680 certainly one of the one of the things i i hope to achieve with this book and for me the tipping

00:23:46.600 point personally which is now something i try and share because i think it is it can be the difference

00:23:51.600 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 0.99

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 0.93

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 0.99

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 0.82

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 0.98

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 0.99

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 where you can find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles we've written over the

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00:46:27.400 but put what you heard into action

00:46:38.100 you

The Art of Manliness - November 25, 2019

#563： How to Develop Your Nature Instinct

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