Latest / Adventure Sports Podcast / Ep. 1171: Holding Nature's Hand Through Natural Navigation - Tristan Gooley

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Ep. 1171: Holding Nature's Hand Through Natural Navigation - Tristan Gooley · Adventure Sports Podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Hello everyone and welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast.
• 0:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is Caleb in addition to the work that I do for the Adventure Sports podcast I am also a video game composer and in addition to my background in music I also have a background in philosophy something that I studied a lot in college
• 0:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I thought it would be fun to combine the two.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: So recently I started a YouTube channel, where I talk about the congruence of music and creativity in general with AI and how AI can affect creativity, the human creative spirit, and the human creative conversation.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's just me thinking through
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: means for human creativity and things that we can do, practical things that we can do to preserve our own human creative spirit in light of all that.
• 1:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: So if that's something you're interested in, you can check out the link for that YouTube channel and the description below.
• 1:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're listening to the Adventure Sports podcast.
• 1:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: We talk with adventurers from around the globe to bring you the inspiration and motivation you need to get started in the outdoors or to keep you moving if you're already there.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: In this episode, Kurt interviews Tristan Goole.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Tristan is an author and natural navigator expert.
• 1:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's spent decades.
• 1:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: Learning the clues and signs in nature across the globe about how to navigate using the natural signs like the sun and the stars and even the environment around him such as plants, weather, and those sorts of things.
• 1:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Tristan has led pioneering expeditions, sailed boats across oceans, and piloted small aircraft to Africa and the Arctic.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: He is also ran fun experiments like testing ancient Viking navigation methods.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: He is the only living person to have both flown solo and sailed single-handed across the Atlantic, and he is a fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: But unfortunately, the beginning of this episode was cut off, and Kurt tells a story which Tristan is responding to at the start of the episode.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: Unfortunately, we don't have the audio for that story, and Kurt is still returning from Africa, so there's not a possibility of he recreating it.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: From the context of the podcast, though, I think I have a pretty good idea of what the story
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so I'll do my best to give context for the beginning of the episode several years ago My dad and cousin and I were in the woods.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: We were off trail and my cousin asked my dad Which way was north or what the different directions were based on where the sun was?
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: We weren't in any danger or anything, and we knew exactly where we were.
• 3:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was more of just a thought experiment to see if we could figure out our directions based purely off the sun.
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: My dad looked around and he became quite puzzled because based on his understanding at the time, the sun was in the wrong place.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was not where it should have been.
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: From that experience, he and my cousin actually sat down and did the geometry to figure out the direction of the sun where we were in that time of year so that then they could sort out how to use the sun to tell the cardinal directions.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm 95% sure that's what the story is at the very least it fits within the context of the episode and hopefully I'm right.
• 4:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: Anyways, I hope you enjoy this episode.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a truly fascinating episode, amazing conversation.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: All right, enough of me.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Here we go.
• 4:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, these skills will definitely help you if the kit fails.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I really encourage people to nurture them for when they're going's good, because it's the best possible way to connect with us aroundings, to sense and see things that most people don't.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: In your second example, that was a really, really good example of where, you know, you felt lost, but then,
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: You actually had the two core skills there.
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: So you had a sign that was giving you some idea of direction in the moon.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then you have what we commonly refer to as a handrail in navigation, the highway.
• 4:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: And all that from navigation is, instead of having one or two very, very kind of bold things like that, you're tuning into absolutely everything in your surroundings.
• 5:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: As much as you want to, you mentioned also you've been on a deer hunt, and it's notorious, if you're trailing an animal or stalking or hunting, or anything like that, however good an navigator you will become disorientated.
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, our brain isn't actually capable of taking in all of these cues while doing something that says a sort of resource hungry as is following an animal in the wild.
• 5:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: So then it's about re-tuning into things.
• 5:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, as I said, it really is, I think a skill for fun and connection, not just emergencies.
• 5:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: Great stuff to have if it's all going upside down, but I use it when I use it as much on days when the sun's out and things are going well, as I do on times when I'm trying to challenge myself.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I couldn't agree more.
• 5:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: I, what has happened because of these experiences.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: As I've started trying to learn more and learn more and learn more and it kind of turned into a lifelong pursuit.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now I never got as skilled at it as I know that you are, not even close, but I'm here to learn today because I want to know more about this.
• 6:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: The first big backpacking trip I took my oldest son on.
• 6:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: He was 13, I believe.
• 6:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: and as we're hiking out we again off trail seems like that's the way life is for us but as we're hiking out um at one point he just said dad where are you going
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I stopped and I took a count of my surroundings and the where the sun was and the shadows and all that sort of thing and I said you're absolutely right.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going the wrong way and so he's one with the compass in his head.
• 6:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the point you just made about if you just take the time to connect with everything, you get so much more out of it than just a direction.
• 6:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: Right?
• 6:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: Totally.
• 6:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: And we can take your examples and experiences there and maybe combine some of what the academics have found out as well.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, when you are traversing some high ground and you hadn't noticed that the layer of the land had changed effectively and the high ground had led you round in a different direction.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: What the academics have found and we've all experienced ourselves in some form or another
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: is that without external reference, human beings will walk in circles effectively.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: We don't have without external reference.
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's nothing internal.
• 7:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot of research going into how some animals, not least birds, do have internal ways of a vom sensing direction.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: But my point here, what's largely misunderstood is that in the academic world, and in areas where people haven't given this any thought,
• 7:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's this belief that the external references are very few.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Like it's the son or it's the North Star or it's the moon or it's a distant peak or it's a coastline.
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, the kind of feeling if you haven't ever given this whole area of natural navigation any thought is those are the only things that are going to help you.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: But actually, what my work has been about for the last 20 years.
• 8:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: is refining that to the point where absolutely everything can help you.
• 8:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, I mean, the way grass is a bent over by the wind.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: That is not random.
• 8:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: I've under high pressure conditions found, found things miles away in fog, just using the way the grass is bent.
• 8:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, that's something that might only be, you know,
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: seven feet from our nose and can help us actually find something that's a few miles away.
• 8:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: It doesn't have to be, you know, a big sun all moon.
• 8:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: you know there's so many directions that we could go with this conversation right now and i'd last i forget i just want people to know that you have a lot of resources to help with this and it's a it's an amazing hobby it is a pastime it not only could it save your save a life but like you said it's just connects you with the the natural world around you in such an amazing way so i want everyone to know about these resources we will revisit them
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: later in the show but you have several books the most recent being the hidden seasons and then you have like four or five more along the same lines tell me if I if if I'm listing these books correctly here I see the lost art of reading nature signs the walkers guy doubt door clues and signs how do you know I'm sorry okay so the the my North American
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: the UK title, the walkers go down to clues and signs and change it to the lost art of reading nature's signs.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Interesting.
• 9:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, how to read water from 2016.
• 9:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: This secret world of weather, that's another one that I think is pretty cool from 2021.
• 10:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm moving forward in time as we go here.
• 10:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: How to read a tree, 2023, and then the hidden seasons, which is your latest 2025, did I miss any?
• 10:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think there's a couple, but if people want to have a dive, then all the information is out there on all the usual places and my website, naturalnavigator.com, where I explain but I'm always happy to get messages, people are saying, what's the difference between this and this?
• 10:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: And in summary, I'm taking a simple powerful philosophy, which is everything outdoors is a clue and a sign.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: It is trying to tell us something.
• 10:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then I'm coming at that idea from different angles and with different content.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: So how to read water and how to read a tree.
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's pretty obvious the angle I'm taking there.
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: How to read a tree is the, you know, 200 different clues that we can get by just looking at an average tree.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're not looking for special species.
• 10:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're talking about a tree.
• 10:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: You can see in a park in a city or a tree in the, in the back of beyond.
• 11:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: How to read water.
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's how,
• 11:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you think of your favorite patch of water, you know, it could be anything.
• 11:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: It could be, again, a pond in a city or a massive ocean.
• 11:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: Every time you look at it, it looks slightly different.
• 11:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: And all of those differences, it's a language.
• 11:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: I sometimes think of it as the hub and spoke model, where
• 11:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: at the harbour is that very simple idea, everything outdoors is a clue, and then each book is a spoke of me coming at it.
• 11:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: So the most recent book, the hidden seasons, I'm taking this idea that that we look for different signs at different times of the year.
• 11:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, there's, you know, January is not the most rewarding time to make a compass out of wildflowers.
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: You can still do it in January, but you're going to have a lot more fun doing that in May and June.
• 11:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: whereas midwinter's fantastic for looking at star compasses.
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: There are different weather signs at different times of the year, different cloud patterns and clues in those.
• 11:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's all I'm doing is taking it's one idea that I've been having fun throwing myself at for 20 something years now.
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: So fun.
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: In way of example, let's do the trees.
• 12:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the reason is because when I was a kid, I read some sort of a little survival guidebook that said, the moss grows on the north side of the tree.
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sometimes you just said that the trees give us all sorts of signs, right?
• 12:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: So let's talk about what you can learn by just reading a tree.
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, absolutely.
• 12:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: The key here is nothing is random.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: So you will never ever have the billions of trees on planet earth.
• 12:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're probably in a lifetime.
• 12:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: See hundreds of thousands of them, probably millions.
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: You'll never see two that are the same.
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: And every difference, there's a cause.
• 12:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: And therefore, there's meaning, therefore, there's a sign.
• 12:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: So let's actually get a bit more kind of nuts and bolts here.
• 12:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, trees are not symmetrical.
• 12:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you are somebody's to draw a tree, they draw a symmetrical tree because that's our idea of a tree, but trees are not symmetrical.
• 12:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: They grow bigger on their south side.
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: The branch is a closer to horizontal on the south side, close to vertical on the north side, and it's all to do with the asymmetry of light.
• 13:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you're north of the tropics, the sun is due south in the middle of the day every day of the year.
• 13:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the way I think of it is the sun, the wind, water, and a few other things are leaving footprints on everything, not least the trees.
• 13:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: So there are over 20 ways we can navigate with big bold signs and trees, and then it comes down to some quite subtle ones like, you know, the colour of bark is typically very slightly different on the north and south side.
• 13:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: But even in the centre of a city, look at the most exposed part of the tree, the very highest part of the tallest trees.
• 13:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: And you'll just notice it bent over typically from west to east or something close to that, depending on what the prevailing winds are in your part of the world.
• 13:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: But as I say, every single, you know, the leaves are smaller and lighter in colour on the south side, bigger and darker on the north side of a tree.
• 13:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: And a lot of these things sit just below the obvious.
• 13:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: Some things are obvious, you know, if you ask,
• 13:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: you know, hopefully if you ask any child over, over about, you know, age eight or nine, they will be able to tell you that you can, you can age a tree stump by counting the rings.
• 14:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's something that has survived, but what I'm really doing is, is, you know, blowing the dust off of things that are not obvious, that our ancestors probably did know, but that we've, we've sort of let go, but you have to, you have to, you know, what to look for, and, and be, give these things just, not a lot, you know,
• 14:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Ah, I'm gonna look for the way the roots stretch away from the base of the tree on the side the winds come from and how that can make a compass.
• 14:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: very cool, you know, this weekend, we had grabbed a permit from the Forest Service.
• 14:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we went into the woods hiking through about 14 inches of snow looking for our holiday Christmas tree.
• 14:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you just said trees aren't symmetrical.
• 14:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: When we go looking for a Christmas tree, you realize that right away because like, oh, well, this was flat on this side.
• 15:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know what I'm saying.
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: No tree is symmetrical.
• 15:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Not unless it's been pruned that way.
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's all the things you see.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm getting images of National Land Pooms Christmas vacation.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, you know, it seems.
• 15:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: But when you say it appears flat on one side, that's very possibly an example of flagging.
• 15:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: So wherever wherever you get on,
• 15:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: regular snow, or if you're close to the coast and you get salt laden winds, we find that the branch is struggled on the side of the winds come from the the bud's die and then the branch is die off.
• 15:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: So you end up with a bear or a struggling side of the tree and it's known as flagging because if we imagine the branches.
• 15:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: are pointing in the direction the wind's blowing because they're struggling on the side of the wind comes from.
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: And so much of natural navigation is just tuning in and you only have to do it once in each region.
• 15:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: When I go to a new part of the world, one of the first things I want to know is what is the prevailing wind direction?
• 16:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Where do most of the strong winds come from?
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: Because those are some of the easiest footprints to see in any landscape.
• 16:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, in Colorado, we see the flagging a lot on ridge lines where the wind is often from the same direction, not always, but often from the same direction.
• 16:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: We see flagging like that.
• 16:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: You have to know what the winds are likely to do to understand the flag I would think.
• 16:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: That would be the one caveat.
• 16:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, totally yes.
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: And so with all wind clues, we're reading a story and we're being sensitive to time.
• 16:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: So the flop here, something is and the more exposed it is, the shorter it's memory.
• 16:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it doesn't matter if we're talking about grasses or mighty, mighty trees.
• 16:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: The more effort it takes for the wind to change their shape, the longer their memory, so the more dependable they are.
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: So if, for example, I mean, a good example is in the UK, we get most of our most of our strong winds from the Southwest.
• 17:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: And so I know that in most regions in the UK and indeed Northwest Europe.
• 17:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm going to see most of these footprints, you know, from the wind from the south west towards an northeast.
• 17:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: But here we, like everywhere, there are some valleys that don't line up.
• 17:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I was in in some doing some hill walking in a place called the Yorkshire Dales.
• 17:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: and they're the valleys tend to be west-to-east, so the south-west winds come in, and then they get channeled down the valley.
• 17:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Nature doesn't lie, but you've just got to understand what the relationship between the wind, time, and place.
• 17:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: The very floppyest leaves and branches on a tree will change day to day.
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: But the toughest trees, you know, has you get near the tree line, you know, Colorado, you'll, you'll spend plenty of time above the tree line, I'm sure.
• 17:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: So you'll know what I mean.
• 17:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: Once you get to the point where the trees are struggling, you get these kind of null twisted shorter trees.
• 17:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: And they're clinging on for life, but they're giving a pretty strong message because they, yeah, they've lasted.
• 18:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, decades probably have quite harsh wins.
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: So whatever the win does one week to another, they're not going to suddenly change shape.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: They're effectively sculpted into quite a gnarly fixed form.
• 18:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have found that most of the flagging the limbs point east in Colorado because our prevailing winds are from the west, but we also get a lot of strong northern winds in the winter time and then in the other times of the year, you can get southwest really winds, that's sort of thing.
• 18:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, if you know the topography, it's a really good clue.
• 18:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I've heard this said, I don't even know if it's true, but I want to ask you this in this way.
• 18:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've heard it said that if a deer sees you,
• 18:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: that's not enough to scare it.
• 18:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: If it sees and hears you, it'll run away.
• 18:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: If it hears and smells you, it'll run away.
• 18:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: If it only smells you, it'll probably put its head back down and continue to graze.
• 18:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: What I'm saying here is it takes two clues to start a
• 19:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: How many clues should we be looking for where we're trying to use natural navigation to confirm that we haven't made a mistake.
• 19:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: For instance, the valley turns the wind in the tree point south in this one location.
• 19:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's a good question.
• 19:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I'll answer it in a moment if I make because I just want to come back to your two things with the deer.
• 19:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: In my latest book, The Hidden Seasons, there's a tiny section in it called
• 19:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's basically that, you know, pre-annamals are having to be sensitive to their environment the whole time, because if there's a predator out there, it could be their last day.
• 19:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: But that's said, there's always a mixture of living and non-living sounds in any landscape.
• 19:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: By which I mean,
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: If there's a wind of any sort, you know, there are going to be branches bending, there's going to be the sound of foliage, there's going to be the odd snap as dry week branch.
• 20:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: He's break that sort of thing.
• 20:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let's take the deer.
• 20:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: The deer, every time here's a sound that could be another animal, it can't stop grazing because, you know, and browsing, it can't because there's always enough noise out there that, so what it's generally, what all animals are generally doing is a probability game.
• 20:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: that's what all animals are doing.
• 20:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: They just basically go, okay, some, some twigs snapping over there, you know, what's the likelihood that's a predator?
• 20:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: Not very likely.
• 20:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: I might lift my head, I might lift my ears, but I'm not, I'm not going to kind of, you know, charge, charge away.
• 20:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm not going to go into flight behavior.
• 20:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: But if they hear two sounds,
• 20:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: from that same location, the probability that that's non-living drops and the probability that's living shoots up.
• 20:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: As you're saying, if they pick up a scent and a sound or they pick up a sight and a scent, it's just shrinks the probability that this is...
• 21:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: you know, something that can ignore.
• 21:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, so this is how we learn to predict animal behavior is you learn the kind of alert behavior, then you learn the flight behavior, then you learn the refuge behavior.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: And if you bolt all of those together, you can actually have a bit of fun because you can go, right, I'm going to take two places forward.
• 21:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: That fellow deer is going to go uphill because that's the flight behavior and it's going to head towards those trees because that's
• 21:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, if you don't explain the different steps to somebody, and then the deer does exactly what you've said it's going to do, they think it's psychic, but it's not.
• 21:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's just, it's just putting pieces together.
• 21:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: But in answer to your question, how many signs do we need?
• 21:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: When I'm teaching on my courses, but also when I'm writing about it,
• 21:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: I generally encourage a top-down view by which, I mean, we go, we go celestial, what are the sun moon stars and occasionally planets telling us?
• 21:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Then we drop down to wind and weather, and then we come down to surface clues.
• 22:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: The reason we do it in that order is because like so much stuff I share, I learnt the hard stupid way, which is that
• 22:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you spend a wonderful ten minutes in inspecting likens or mosses on a rock or a tree when the sun is out, and then you stand up ten minutes later as the cloud seals the sun out for the next three days.
• 22:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: You feel like an idiot.
• 22:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: So you take the really powerful celestial cues when you can and you bag them.
• 22:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: In my case, if it's practical stuff, you drop the sun to the horizon by which, I mean, you imagine it's like a stone falling vertically.
• 22:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: then you pick something on the horizon, because that way, if you lose the sun, it doesn't same thing for moon or stars.
• 22:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: You've probably still got something you can see in the horizon.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: You've got to be thinking about cloud bases and all that sort of good stuff as well.
• 22:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: But but generally, let's say there's a medium height, you know, distinctive rock formation on a ridge line that's not the very highest thing that's not going to disappear as the cloud
• 22:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, that's a few miles away from you.
• 23:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: Then the clouds can come over you.
• 23:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: You can get this thick strata's blanket, which means you don't get any celestial cues, perhaps for a day.
• 23:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: But, you know, whenever you've got sight of that rock formation, you've gone, ah, for simplicity's turn.
• 23:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: For simplicity sake, we're saying it's the middle of the day, the sun dropped onto that rock formation.
• 23:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, that is south, you know, unless you walk a very long distance, it's going to give you a good sense of direction.
• 23:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: Once you come down to wind and weather, you're going to want to back that up with something because the wind may change.
• 23:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, generally speaking, unless there's a significant weather change, the wind direction before it started mixing with the topography in the land is fairly constant.
• 23:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then as we come down to the ground, we want more than one or two things, we start to think of it as a tapestry.
• 23:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: So you're not going to look at just flagging and going right, let's head off for five miles in this direction.
• 23:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: You're going to look at the flagging, you're going to look at the likeons on the rock, you're going to sense the wind as well, you're going to start to put several pieces together.
• 24:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: And so with Celestial Cues, you only need one.
• 24:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you know how to find the North Star or use the Sun or the Moon, then you genuinely don't need another directional queue.
• 24:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: You're still going to be tuning into things, because that's what I'm doing all the time is, if it's a nice sunny day, it takes all of two seconds to get a very strong sense of direction.
• 24:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: and even to sort of mark it on the horizon and things like that.
• 24:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: But that's when you really feast on the other things.
• 24:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: So a good example would be I was walking in the Lake District, North West England a few days ago.
• 24:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I get a sense of direction from the sun then being the Lake District that doesn't last very long.
• 24:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: The clouds blocked that out.
• 24:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I've now still got that sense of direction from the shape of the land, and having dropped it to the horizon.
• 24:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: I can now put a lot of faith into the lake and patterns.
• 24:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, that is South.
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, those bright green likens, Matt likens as they're known, um, uh, they are giving me a strong sense of South.
• 25:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: They are responding to the light, uh, and then you're tuning into the shape of the land and everything else.
• 25:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it's, it's, there's no, you can never have too many, but if you, if you bank the celestial help when you, when you, when you can, you, you, the rest of it's a, a good fun luxury.
• 25:18
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• 25:22
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• 25:33
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• 25:48
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• 25:57
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• 26:07
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• 26:23
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• 26:31
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• 26:32
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• 26:35
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• 26:41
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• 26:47
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• 26:51
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• 27:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I want to talk about the sun.
• 27:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: in a minute because the sun is both helped me and confused me and I want to come back to that because it can be misleading if you don't understand the way that it works.
• 27:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of people would like to think well it rises in the east and it sets in the west and that's all I need to know but that is not all you need to know.
• 27:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: I can guarantee you.
• 27:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I want to go back to the trees just in way of example where we were looking for the Christmas tree.
• 27:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: We were in a valley with limited light.
• 27:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: The mountain we were on, we were on a north facing slope for the most part, northeast.
• 27:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: And there are tall trees and small trees.
• 27:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And of course, we're looking for the right-size smaller one.
• 27:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the bigger ones are casting shadows.
• 27:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: and the trees all chased the light.
• 27:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so some of the trees grow in these erratic, crazy patterns because they are just trying to find a little bit of sun.
• 27:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so the flagging can get really confused, right?
• 28:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Especially with a smaller trees.
• 28:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: But what was obviously apparent?
• 28:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're looking for a Christmas tree, and you say, well, it doesn't have any limbs on this side.
• 28:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then you look right beside it.
• 28:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: And oh, there's a tree twice is tall and thick on that side.
• 28:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's no sun on that side.
• 28:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: And why does this matter?
• 28:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because the sunlight is how the trees make food.
• 28:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: So they don't waste time growing limbs into the shade.
• 28:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: their go limbs toward the sun.
• 28:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if this sun is only shining on a shining on that tree from one direction, because of the shadowing of a larger tree or something, then it's going to completely change the way the tree is.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: But if you begin looking at these things, then they become apparent.
• 28:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if you find a tree that's solitary in the middle of a meadow, it'll be symmetrical.
• 28:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, I don't think it will be, honestly, it will be more symmetrical than one that's been shaded on one side for sure.
• 28:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: But, um, but it, I believe it's now, I guess.
• 28:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, absolutely.
• 29:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
• 29:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: So again, as you say, they're not going to, they're not going to put a lot of resources growing into, uh, in directions, they're not getting a lot of light.
• 29:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's very easy to, and, and throttle more Fise's trees and say they want to grow south or anything like that.
• 29:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: What we have to remember is that it's a constant feedback cycle.
• 29:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: If a tree is harvesting loads of energy through a branch, it sends resources that way.
• 29:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's not dissimilar to a retail business analogy.
• 29:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let's say a company's got 20 retail branches around a country.
• 29:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, if ten of them are doing amazingly well and the manager is a constantly messaging saying, I need more staff, you know, we've got a cure of eight people.
• 29:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: People are peeping out the door here and ten branches are saying like, we have tried everything you've suggested over the last year, you know, there's a tumble we're blowing through the store.
• 29:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's there's nothing happening.
• 29:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: We know that company, if it's sensible, is going to look different in two years time, where the stores are doing well, more staff bigger, bigger retail space and that's all the trees are doing.
• 30:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: They're going where the resources are.
• 30:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's really fun.
• 30:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Every tree tells a story and we actually have a game that we play when we're out in the woods.
• 30:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's especially fun when there's someone there who hasn't spent a lot of time in the woods because when you say the forest tells a story and there's a history here, can you read the forest?
• 30:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've seen people look around and start noticing these clues for the first
• 30:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: in a way that I mean they thought they were just walking in the woods and all of a sudden these trees they probably do anthropomorphize some but the tree becomes something besides just wood now it's an individual who has history.
• 30:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we've done this before and you know the evidence of logging at some point in the past or a fire or evidence of a
• 30:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: of insect infestations or evidence of a virus or evidence, you know, of the way that the sun shines particularly into that valley or which direction the wind blows the strongest.
• 31:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it pretty soon you begin to see every tree as unique.
• 31:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: People look at something and say, why is this?
• 31:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: What do you think did that?
• 31:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know,
• 31:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: Totally.
• 31:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: And you've reminded me of some of my most fun experiences.
• 31:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: I see my work as a treasure hunt.
• 31:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: And when I go to a new place, I'm imagining I'm going to see a lot of old friends in the sense of signs that I'm familiar with.
• 31:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: I've been doing it.
• 31:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: long enough now that it's rare I walk out and go, or what's this alien landscape, none of this makes any sense.
• 31:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: But there will normally be, if I spend a few days hiking anywhere, I will expect and hope to come back with one or two that are totally unique to that region, or if not unique, certainly.
• 31:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: I can remember the very first time that I, because we don't get a lot, we don't get forest fires in the way that large parts of the
• 31:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: North American continent and other parts of the world do here in the UK.
• 32:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: We do get them, but they're not such a big feature in terms of most landscape.
• 32:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I've seen evidence of them here, but they're not my go-to.
• 32:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I was walking in La Parma in the Canary Islands.
• 32:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm constantly looking for asymmetry.
• 32:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I saw this darker, darker pattern on the side of some of the pine trees.
• 32:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it wasn't obvious for our damage, you know, even if you're not looking for it, if something's something's been, you know, torched for hours and hours, you're going, you're going to know.
• 32:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: But this was, you know, a brush fire of something that moved really fast through, and there was just this, this charring, I wanted.
• 32:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: And once you, you know, you spotted it, it suddenly just so powerful, because again, you just got to know where those fires gone through, but it wasn't, it wasn't on, I was expecting to see that day, and it just filled me with joy.
• 32:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I
• 32:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: in Texas with some aerial firefighters there actually and you know we were having an amazing time just comparing notes because obviously they've got just one of the things I love about the outdoors is every expert has their perspective you know I have my natural navigation one but one of the joys of natural navigation is I can feed anything in you know if if somebody's
• 33:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: you know, if they can be into mushrooms or they can be into clouds, they can be into stars, they can be into anything.
• 33:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: They can be into something that they, you know, here, let's have some fun and, you know, name, name and outdoors pursuit or expertise or something like that that you think will have no obvious connection with navigation and I'll have a bit of a play.
• 33:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hmm, you don't want that is very critical, life and death critical.
• 33:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's backcountry skiing in Colorado.
• 33:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, okay.
• 33:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I get a lot of ways that this plays in.
• 33:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: Fantastic.
• 33:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: I honestly can't tell you whether this would work in that region, because I've only ever tried it in the out.
• 33:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I'm not a particularly good skier, which is one of the reasons why I was with a phenomenal,
• 34:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: I explained my weird interest even on holiday, if I'm with an expert of any sort, I want to know how they can shed light on an area in a way that I haven't thought about it and they always can, obviously.
• 34:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: And this instructor said, okay, one hour from now, you are going to be telling me whether you are skiing north east south or west purely by sound.
• 34:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it was surprisingly easy, surprisingly easy.
• 34:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, we happen to be out there after a particularly cold night when the sun was out.
• 34:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, those conditions make it a lot easier, obviously.
• 34:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's why you know, downhill skiers are picking certain slopes, particularly when the conditions are marginal.
• 34:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I'm not an experienced skier, so I'd never thought of it that way.
• 34:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: That you can actually just from the sound of the snow under skis, tell which what the aspect is.
• 34:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's wonderful.
• 34:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: So several things come out of this.
• 35:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: In Colorado, we were at Simi Arid, even some places are Arid landscape.
• 35:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so when you see a forest, it is growing where there are resources.
• 35:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so one side of the mountain, often will be barren, just little scrub, maybe scrub a, maybe not even that, maybe sagebrush.
• 35:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the other side of the mountain will have a healthy forest.
• 35:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you say, well, what's going on here?
• 35:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's the side of the mountain that holds the snow.
• 35:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's the side of the mountain that has the trees.
• 35:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because it's the snow melts in the spring that provides a resources for the trees.
• 35:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so because of that, you can look at the landscape and say, oh, east, north, south, you know, just by looking at where the trees are in relation to the valleys.
• 35:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the same thing comes into effect when you're skiing.
• 35:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: The reason is because the prevailing winds load that snow on one side of the hill over or the mountain versus the other, and that tells you where the most snow is going to be, but it also tells you where the greatest probability of an avalanche is going to be.
• 36:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it is directional, and it is based on what the sun melts off and sublimates during the winter time.
• 36:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, that would be your southern and western slopes generally.
• 36:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: And this note tends to load the most on the eastern and northern slopes northern, primarily because they're in the shade, and eastern because the prevailing winds are from the west.
• 36:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: So anyway, just another example.
• 36:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah and let's play with us now a bit more.
• 36:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: I, in the hidden seasons, there's a section where I'm in the Scottish Highlands and I'm trying to quite often what I'm doing is taking broad concepts that are familiar amongst, you know, any sort of outdoors communities that are having fun in those types of landscapes and just trying to push it into some lesser thought about or, or more kind of niche knowledge.
• 36:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: So,
• 36:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: What I was doing there is exactly what you were describing there.
• 36:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, we get these asymmetries where in that part of the world, you get a lot of the heaviest snow coming in from between north and east.
• 37:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: So immediately after the snow, that's where that's the aspect you're going to see, the heaviest snow.
• 37:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then you get a compounding effect because the south facing slope is going to is going to melt faster.
• 37:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: And that's a, that, you know, I go through very briefly, but then I'm going into where you're close to losing the snow, where you've just got
• 37:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, remnants, little snow pockets and stuff like that, you know, if very, very easy for our brain to go, there's a lot going on.
• 37:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: I don't really need to know why why we've got half a dozen pockets there and none over there, but there will be a story and a message and within that signs and a compass.
• 37:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, so what I found was the in that particular landscape and the plants will be will change a bit, but this principle won't change, which is which is the height of the plant and it's tone and color.
• 37:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: We'll play a massive role in how far small pockets are melting, because if you're near to losing the snow, it's probably because there's a thawing wind, as working as well as the sun, the wind is going to thaw things very fast, and if plants, so in that case, Heather was darker and taller than the grasses.
• 38:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it was lifting snow up into the thawing wind, but it was also darker, so the second a bit of thawing took place, it warmed up faster than the lighter grasses, so you ended up with this kind of patchwork.
• 38:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: Heather itself is a sun-loving plant, you get it on sound-facing slope, so you suddenly realize that what was just kind of random patches, every single single patch of snow is telling you something.
• 38:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, I could see something similar if you're walking, boy, the wind can can found this somewhat, but often walking on the mountains when the snow is partially melted out.
• 38:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then you'll find that there are patches of snow in the shadow, the north side of a stone.
• 38:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: right into the south.
• 38:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's no snow.
• 38:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, because the sun's to the south.
• 39:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so the north side is the the last to melt, but of course the prevailing winds can confound that a little bit.
• 39:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, sometimes you get really beautiful examples.
• 39:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you've got if it's midwinter so you've got a very low sun and and the the air temperature is staying um
• 39:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: You can have this lovely window where there is only really about an hour in the middle of the day when the sun is high enough and strong enough to do any serious melting.
• 39:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then you can sometimes get these perfect compasses.
• 39:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: I've got this photo of these mole hills and you've got literally a tail of snow pointing north and it is dark wet mud on the south side and the line between the two is perfectly east.
• 39:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, we really need to talk about the Sun.
• 39:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: So let me introduce a subject this way.
• 40:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you're in the Northern Hemisphere and I'll say everything we've been talking about is Northern Hemisphere.
• 40:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: All of this reverses in the Southern Hemisphere.
• 40:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: But if you're in the Northern Hemisphere in the winter time,
• 40:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: The sun is further south in the summer.
• 40:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: The sun is further north.
• 40:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: I live at about 40 degrees.
• 40:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: Are you 60 degrees, I'm just guessing.
• 40:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: No, I don't want to.
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Right now, I'm 50, but I'm South Coast UK.
• 40:24
  [SPEAKER_04]: So when I'm in the UK, I'm between 50 and 60.
• 40:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 40:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: 50 and 60.
• 40:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 40:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you're a little bit further north.
• 40:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: So these effects get more pronounced the further north you go.
• 40:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: But whenever my nephew asked me which direction we were going and I looked at the sun and realized that it was lying to me.
• 40:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: I actually said the sun is in the wrong place in this guy.
• 40:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is not possible.
• 40:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's when I realized that I didn't understand the sun.
• 40:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I had read.
• 40:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: about what the sun does and how to navigate with the sun a little bit, and promptly forgotten probably most of it, and misunderstood a lot of it, and so I thought that there's only one way for me to really get this.
• 41:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to have to do the geometry, so I set down pencil and paper and actually did the geometry, and then it started to make sense to me, but it didn't until I
• 41:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: is that I had seen the sun setting in the Northwest, quite a distance north.
• 41:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I thought that during the weeks around the solstice, the sun would sweep across the north part of the sky.
• 41:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's not what happens.
• 41:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: So can you explain to people where my confusion came from?
• 41:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, sure.
• 41:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: And I...
• 41:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: The wonderful thing about all aspects of natural navigation, including the celestial clues, and including the sun, is that there's a very fast way to understand the basics and then you can spend decades fine tuning it.
• 42:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: I sometimes say on my course, I'll be standing in front of people and if it's a short course, I say, I could spend all day here talking about the sun, but that's not why you're here, so I'm going to have to just keep it.
• 42:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I'll keep it to the brief version, which is,
• 42:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: As you've said, if you are north of the tropics, which is almost all of the USA and Canada, there are tiny bits that just sneak into the tropics, don't they?
• 42:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: But for simplicity, let's say we're north of the tropics, the sun will be due south in the middle of the day every day of the year.
• 42:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now I'm choosing my words carefully, they're the middle of the day is not always 12 o'clock on your watch.
• 42:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: So the middle of the day, our expression
• 42:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: But the sun will rise and keep on rising until the middle of the day, at which point it is at its highest and it is due south, it will then start to set.
• 42:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: So the words morning and afternoon are just telling us morning is literally when the sun is rising and it is east of us.
• 43:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the afternoon is when it's setting and it's west of us.
• 43:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: There has to be a moment between those two times when it is neither rising or setting.
• 43:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: it's at its highest point.
• 43:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: Shadows are their shortest and they point perfectly north.
• 43:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: So when I encourage people to do instead of I think it's really healthy to kind of get into the geometries you say and stuff like that but the very first thing I encourage everybody to do if they're not totally used to the middle of the day stuff is anywhere in a lunchtime if you see the sun for the rest of your life you just go that's roughly south.
• 43:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, if it's a little bit past lunchtime, you go, that's a bit west of South, if it's a little bit before lunchtime, you go, that's probably used to South.
• 43:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: And that's it for, you know, the very first pillar, if you like.
• 43:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now, rising in the east, setting in the west, on the equinoxes, which is late March, late September, the sun rises, duest and sets duest.
• 43:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: Those are the only two days of the year when the Sun will rise to East and set to West.
• 43:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: Every other day of the year, it is either going to rise and set north of East and West or rise and set south of East and West.
• 44:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now, if we're just throwing labels like East and West and North and South around it can get confusing.
• 44:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: So there's a technique for not getting confused here.
• 44:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: What you do is you set yourself, what time of year is it?
• 44:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: Which pole is pointing towards the Sun?
• 44:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: and however you want, so that question wraps it all up.
• 44:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: So let's work through it.
• 44:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're, as we're chatting now, we're in December.
• 44:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: And not that far off mid-winter in solar terms, the winter source is being late December.
• 44:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it is winter to us because the south pole is pointing towards the sun.
• 44:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: So the answer to the question, what time of year is it?
• 44:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's winter.
• 44:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: Why is it winter because the south pole is pointing towards the sun?
• 44:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: The sun will rise and set south of eastern west.
• 44:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: If in June you go, oh, okay, what time of year is it?
• 44:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's just wind and mid summer.
• 45:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, why is it summer?
• 45:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Ah, the north pole is pointing towards the sun.
• 45:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: The sun will rise and set north of eastern west.
• 45:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: The only regular pitfall is there's part of the brain that feels if it rises north of east, it should set south of west and vice versa and stuff like that.
• 45:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: But that's over the years, there is no button I can push on the side of anyone's head that's going to make all of this stuff come together in two seconds.
• 45:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: But over many decades of teaching it, that question is the one that avoids confusion.
• 45:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: You say, what time of year is it?
• 45:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: that tells you whether the sun will rise and set north of east and west or south of east and west.
• 45:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's one little thing I'll add to it.
• 45:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, as I've mentioned, I could honestly talk about this for eight hours going into more and more detail, but there's only one thing I want to add at this point.
• 45:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's nobody particularly people have an interest in the outdoors, who has lost relationship with the length of day.
• 46:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: So for some people, they find this helps to think about it.
• 46:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: Why are days so long in June?
• 46:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's because the sun is tracing a massive arc.
• 46:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's always going to go through south in the middle of the day, whatever day of the year it is.
• 46:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: To make a really big arc, you've got to rise in the north east and keep on rising and rising and rising and rising really long journey.
• 46:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: We're going from some parts of the world, 4 a.m.
• 46:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, you're rising for eight or nine hours until your, you know, your highest point.
• 46:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then you've got a really long arc all the way down to North West.
• 46:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: That is your June day.
• 46:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: This time of year December, we've got short days.
• 46:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: How do you make a short arc?
• 46:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: You go from roughly southeast.
• 46:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: You climb a little bit.
• 46:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: A few hours later, you're at your highest point, which is not very high to South.
• 46:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then you've got a short journey down to South West.
• 46:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: So if people are really struggling with this,
• 46:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Use a traditional compass or a smartphone or a place where you know where's North Southeast West and just trace with your hand.
• 47:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: Go June and point, you know, northeast and then trace a massive arc in the sky all the way up to high south and then all the way down to North West.
• 47:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's June December really short arc point southeast up a bit to south down to south west.
• 47:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: Everything else is in between those two extremes.
• 47:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love that.
• 47:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: What a beautiful explanation.
• 47:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Something that I've added to my smartphone is an app that shows me where the sun is.
• 47:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it traces those arcs that you just described.
• 47:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then it will put like a Google map under it.
• 47:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you can actually see where the sun should be in relation to what's right in front of you.
• 47:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so you can say, oh, at four o'clock this afternoon, the sun's gonna be there.
• 47:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: But then you can change the date and say, where's the sun gonna be in March?
• 47:56
  [SPEAKER_04]: Right, and it really is help me to visualize everything that you just talked about in it in a much better way.
• 48:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: is catch up on where our ancestors would have been at the stage of life.
• 48:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: They would have spent, you know, depending on your age, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 years, you know, just tuning into this stuff.
• 48:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: What we're trying to do is fill in the missing few decades and if technology helps with that, which it very often does.
• 48:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's why it's saying, any way you need to.
• 48:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I'm always saying to people, you know, use the technology to make a fun challenge out of it.
• 48:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: you know, you don't need to step outside.
• 48:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: You can plant out a window and have it, you know, do your best to gauge where north is.
• 48:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: You go, oh, I can't see the sun but I can see the shadows are going that way.
• 48:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's roughly lunchtime.
• 48:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: So that's going to be north and then, you know, whip out the smartphone.
• 48:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Why not?
• 48:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the comes a really magical moment where you
• 48:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: you're checking things with technology like a smartphone and there's this really wonderful moment.
• 49:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: I've seen it, you know, it happens with the North Star quite a lot because people are less confident in stars because typically they're not using them much these days.
• 49:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: But once you know the techniques for finding North Southeast or West Eastern stars, it's very very normal to want to check that with technology and there's nothing wrong with that at all but the magical moment comes where it might be the third time, it might be the 33rd time, it doesn't matter
• 49:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: That if the technology is not telling you the North Star is North, the problems in the technology, by which I mean.
• 49:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, if you can find the North Star and it disagrees with your smart phone, you know.
• 49:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: Your smart phone is wrong.
• 49:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Some of the people already know that my day job has been an RF engineer.
• 49:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it is like cellular networks.
• 49:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And one of the things that I used to have to do was what we call shooting asmiths of the antennas to make sure they're pointed in the correct direction.
• 49:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: And from the ground, you'll stand where you're directly in front of the antennas, and then you use a compass.
• 50:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And of course, you figure out what the declination is so that you can actually estimate to within a couple of degrees if that antennas pointed in the right direction.
• 50:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the reason I tell this, I've done it a thousand times.
• 50:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: this was a rooftop site and their people up on the roof working on it one day i'm trying to shoot the asthma and i'm just like man they have really messed this up and i'm looking at my compass and the people on the roof yelled down to me hey look down i was standing on a steelman hole cover
• 50:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's on my compass, which is no good whatsoever.
• 50:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I was like, what is going on here?
• 50:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it's one of those moments, technology fails for a variety of reasons.
• 50:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I love what you just said when you know better than the phone, you know that something's happened.
• 51:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now you've arrived at some new level of understanding.
• 51:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, when I did the solar flight across the Atlantic is a good example of that.
• 51:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now, to do any sort of serious aviation, you have to get an instrument rating, and part of the training there is trusting the instruments more than what your inner area in particular is doing.
• 51:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: When we accelerate the inner area is telling the brain that we're pitching up and vice versa.
• 51:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: And lots and lots of people in the early days sadly lost their lives through trusting their inner area.
• 51:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: So you're trained to trust the instrument.
• 51:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: But there are lots of situations where it's a visual thing.
• 51:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I was taking off for memory a northeast out of Goose Bay, and you found it in May, and there was a lot of snow ice and water in the first few hours.
• 51:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: and I'm taking off towards sunrise.
• 51:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now, if I wasn't aware and very comfortable that the sun is going to rise well north of east, I could have had a horrible experience where I'm looking at all this kit.
• 52:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: The first time solo in this aircraft type over water,
• 52:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: And if all I was thinking is the sun rises east every day, that's a pretty much 45 degree difference between what the instruments are telling me and what popular perception what the sun does is.
• 52:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: So in that situation, it was lovely that all the things kind of married.
• 52:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: I was going to like, yes, my magnetic compass is telling me I'm flying near north east, all the electronics are telling me I'm flying near north east and the sun is northeast.
• 52:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: There is no mismatch there at all.
• 52:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's where the source of my confusion came from, obviously, in the story about my nephew asking which direction we were hiking in the forest.
• 52:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let me give you a scenario and tell us how you would manage it, just because I think it happens a lot, it's, um, it's wintertime.
• 52:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're in the forest.
• 52:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: You've been having fun, skiing, sledding, hiking, whatever you've been doing, you've not been paying attention, and suddenly you realize, oh, it's for a clock in the afternoon.
• 53:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's say 330, just give it a little bit more.
• 53:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's 330 in the afternoon.
• 53:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've kind of lost my way.
• 53:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I want to know what West is.
• 53:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: I want to, or at least one of the directions so that I can make sure I'm taking the best route out of here.
• 53:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it's, it's winter and it's 330 in the afternoon and the sun is somewhere south-ish, somewhere west-ish.
• 53:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do you find your way in that scenario?
• 53:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, so me personally when you're using the sun and you have quite a lot of experience of using it.
• 53:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: What you're always doing is finding out where it is between two fixed points.
• 53:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: So the sun is either going to be
• 53:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: Assuming it is not exactly sunrise sunset or the middle of the day, which is quite rare nice examples, but it's going to be between sunrise, the middle of the day or between the middle of the day and sunset.
• 54:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: So then all we've got to do, middle of the day, it's easy.
• 54:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: We've nailed that already.
• 54:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's too south.
• 54:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's never going to change.
• 54:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
• 54:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: So we've got to do, we've got to all we've got to do is think about where sunset is and we go back to the the time of year.
• 54:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: So
• 54:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: It does get a little bit more advanced and there is a bit more thinking because latitude comes into it.
• 54:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: And just as a weird thought experiment, if there's a group of six of you hiking, the sun will have a very slightly different position of sunset for each of you, even if there's only three feet between you.
• 54:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: Because whenever you move north or south at all, the bearing of the sun changes very slightly, and whenever you move east or west, the timing changes very slightly.
• 54:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: But to take that to a more practical point, the further from the equator you are, the more extreme the seasonal adjustment.
• 54:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: So when I was mentioning earlier that in the South Coast UK at 50 degrees north, North Coast of Scotland, near a 60 degrees north, that's the sort of difference that is well worth taking into account.
• 55:05
  [SPEAKER_04]: By which, I mean, I would know that in late December, for example, in the circumstances you're giving, I would expect on the South Coast of England the sun to be setting just on the west side of Southwest.
• 55:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: but if I go all the way up to the North Coast of Scotland, it's going to be just past southwest.
• 55:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: So there's not, I don't think there's much value in us going down to this sort of degrees and this sort of stuff, but but when I've used this as a primary navigational tool,
• 55:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: What I am doing is tuning into the degrees.
• 55:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: I will know to the number where the sum will set for that latitude.
• 55:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then the next part of the puzzle and this is getting more advanced.
• 55:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm not expecting anyone to fall in love with the subject with this level of detail.
• 55:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: But as your latitude increases,
• 55:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: the angle of all celestial objects on Moon Stars and planets when they set to get shallower.
• 56:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now I can explain that in a slightly neat way at the equator, things rise and set vertically.
• 56:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: at the poles, they move horizontally.
• 56:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: But we spend all of our time typically between those two.
• 56:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it's a number called your co-latitude, which is 90 degrees minus your latitude.
• 56:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: So don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, open your needs to, you know, drown in the detail here.
• 56:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: I'm just sort of explaining what I would be going through if I was genuinely trying to use the Sun as a primary navigational tool in a tough and scenario.
• 56:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, let's stick with those UK numbers of 50 and 60 for now.
• 56:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: On the South Coast of England, the sum will be setting at an angle of 40 degrees.
• 56:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, let's say by measuring with an extended fist, which is 10 degrees, the sun looks like it's one hour from setting.
• 56:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: I am then building triangles visually and you can actually do it with bits of string and stuff like that.
• 56:55
  [SPEAKER_04]: If your life's going to depend on it, working out back from sunset where the sun is.
• 57:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: So to make it slightly easier to digest, if you stick out your fist and work out the sun is one and a half fist above the horizon at the equator.
• 57:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, it is one out of your sunset and then you work out where your sunset, you know, bearing is going to be and that will be it because it's going to set vertically.
• 57:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, if you're at the North Pole, you're not going to be doing this exercise at all, because the sun's going to be moving horizontally parallel to the horizon, right?
• 57:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: Everywhere in between, you are visualizing the more often than not, it's fairly casual.
• 57:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: As in, if I'm at 35 degrees north, I will be factoring in a steeper sunset.
• 57:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: And going, okay, for simplicity, let's say at setting southwest, the sun is currently perhaps only
• 57:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: 10 degrees south of that, whereas if I'm up at 5560 degrees north, I'd be going, okay, the sun, the sun will be setting south of south west and it is going to be 15 degrees south of that right now.
• 58:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, there have been times not hundreds of them because it's as you can hear it, so it's a pretty convoluted process, but there have been times where I'm doing that and it takes, you know, 15 minutes concentration and and
• 58:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: the one in 60 rule.
• 58:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you're one degree out and you travel 60 miles, you will be a mile from where you think you are.
• 58:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, if you're 10 degrees out, you don't have to travel that far before you're not close to where you thought you would be.
• 58:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, there have been times where I do it like that, but the really fun interesting thing is,
• 58:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: However hard we have to work at any of this stuff in the beginning, the brain takes over the process.
• 58:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: Because our ancestors were finding their way across continents without, you know, mostly getting lost.
• 58:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: And they weren't thinking about things like co-latitudes and stuff like that.
• 58:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: This is just again a way of trying to short-cut back into that way of thinking.
• 58:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: It sounds much more technical than it is.
• 58:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: What happens on the first half of the day is you're thinking, right?
• 58:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, co-latitude 90 degrees minus 50 degrees.
• 59:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: Okay, the sun is going to set at 40 degrees and no, no, no.
• 59:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: By the end of the first day, you're not even thinking like that.
• 59:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, that sounds like that's what that means.
• 59:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's all very dirty.
• 59:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: But otherwise none of us would exist.
• 59:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: I love what you were saying about the fist.
• 59:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's such a great tool.
• 59:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I use my fingers kind of dent and I hold my arm straight out.
• 59:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: And a hand.
• 59:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: you know, the straight out from your arm represents about an hour ish, right?
• 59:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm being general here, but a few things that I've learned that allow me to judge a lot about time and distance and everything, because I just have to remember what time does sunset arise?
• 59:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: generally this time of the year.
• 59:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have to know if it's daylight savings time or not.
• 59:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then just remember, okay, well, the sun's going to set in the northwest.
• 59:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm just going to use my hand to track that arc until I get to the sun and that's how many hours until sunset.
• 1:00:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And assuming you can see a flat horizon and in Colorado you can't you're always looking at an elevation so you have to get a feel for if if I were in the planes where were the horizon be you know but those sorts of things allow you to tell time to within about 15 minutes and to know direction very very well because you're just paying attention to it and as you pay attention to it it becomes kind of natural.
• 1:00:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: Absolutely, and if we take the high ground example, it is technically, you know, for you sunset when it goes behind the ridge line, you know, even if, so you can have the situation where you phone, you're out for a couple of days hiking and you phone home that is, you know, maybe two hours drive well, something like that.
• 1:00:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: And you will have different sunset times, you know, because you're behind a ridge or homes behind a ridge or something like that.
• 1:00:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I make this point occasionally that you can make a fun low-tech time machine.
• 1:01:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, if you've got a friendly kind of slope, you can play the tape forwards and backwards.
• 1:01:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, you can literally make the sun rise again once it's set.
• 1:01:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: you know, just by heading uphill.
• 1:01:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:01:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: One thing that that I've done before is go to a high point and watch them in rise and then drive down to a low point and watch it again.
• 1:01:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 1:01:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's fun to see it.
• 1:01:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can do the same thing with Mercury, right?
• 1:01:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you want to see Mercury, which is hard to see because it's so close to the sun.
• 1:01:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can expand the amount of time that you get to see it by changing your altitude or your elevation.
• 1:01:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Tristan, here's what I would like
• 1:01:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would like to talk a little bit more, but we've burned through our time, and so for the sake of the listeners, I want to make sure that they have all the information they need to learn more about this stuff because it really is a glorious way to interact with nature.
• 1:01:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm going to just me sound like a silly example, but I'm going to say it.
• 1:01:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: You see a lovely guy or a handsome fellow across the room.
• 1:02:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're like, wow, I would really like to get to know that person.
• 1:02:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then you get a little closer and maybe you introduce yourself.
• 1:02:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, you have that conversation close up.
• 1:02:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can tell what color their eyes are.
• 1:02:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Maybe pick up some pheromones even, right?
• 1:02:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then comes a magic moment when you take her hand.
• 1:02:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: or she takes yours or he takes you know it whatever the genders are.
• 1:02:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I but the point is this that magical moment when you're holding someone's hand and you say this is different we're together right now experiencing this thing together that's what it's like in nature
• 1:02:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: when you have something like this that causes you to connect with it, to pay attention.
• 1:02:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're not looking at the other person across the room anymore.
• 1:02:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're holding the hand and you know you're in it together.
• 1:02:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I just want to say that because this is the magic of what you have spent decades working on.
• 1:03:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I can't.
• 1:03:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: under express how how wonderful I think it really is.
• 1:03:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you're spinning time in the woods, you need to know this stuff, not just so you can find your way out, but so you can hold the hand.
• 1:03:13
  [SPEAKER_04]: I've never heard it put that way.
• 1:03:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's that's beautiful.
• 1:03:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, thank you for that and it matches very nicely with with a lot of feedback I'm getting in the moment where people people are expressing something that I felt a lot which is
• 1:03:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: people are telling me I should connect with nature and it's a lovely idea but I don't know what they're talking about and so I've even you know written about connecting with nature but my my whole point is don't don't go into a natural environment whatever it looks like and think that something magical will automatically happen but it will do if you if you set yourself very simple ancient little conundrums just say to yourself what
• 1:03:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: What time is the sun going to disappear behind that rich line?
• 1:03:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Or can I find north by looking at these leaves or these pine needles?
• 1:03:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: Can I work out what time the rain will start tomorrow by looking at those cloud shapes?
• 1:04:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then all that happens is 10 minutes disappear and you are on a different plane and a connection.
• 1:04:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, holding hands as you say.
• 1:04:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, let's go over how people can learn more information and then if you don't mind if you have the time I would like to talk about weather with you.
• 1:04:21
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah sure.
• 1:04:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah Okay, so the the most recent book is the hidden seasons and where can they find that?
• 1:04:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's available, the usual places, wherever you get your books, it's really well distributed globally, but not least in North America.
• 1:04:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: So support your local bookstore if you can, where we miss them when they disappear.
• 1:04:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: But it is about three on nine books, others if you don't have a local store.
• 1:04:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: So just look for a Tristan Goolee, and it's not just that book, there are many, like we mentioned in the beginning.
• 1:04:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: You have a course, the Beginners Guide to Natural Navigation, where do people participate in the course?
• 1:05:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's an online course which I never imagined doing until COVID forced me to reinvent like so many people, how I did things.
• 1:05:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: And some of the most interesting lessons in life, I'd just so obvious in hindsight.
• 1:05:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well, I hadn't realized I'd been running courses for probably about 15, 16 years by the time that happened.
• 1:05:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: And what I'd realized is the number of people are frustrated because they could never geographically get to places where I was running them typically in the UK.
• 1:05:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, with an online course, you can be anywhere and it's tailored towards the Northern Temperate Zone, but that's most of most of North America is relevant to and you can find that information about that and the books on naturalnavigator.com.
• 1:05:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, the Adventure Sports podcast has the most downloads in English speaking countries, so that takes care of
• 1:05:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: you know, the UK and Canada and the United States, but we also have Australians, South African, many other places where there's a lot of English spoken, so New Zealand, the point I guess I'm getting at is that it all still works.
• 1:06:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: You just have to flip it.
• 1:06:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and I do get a there's a page on my website explaining the the differences for for southern hemisphere adventurous, but the the principles are identical, not just globally, but you universally by which I mean you can navigate from the shape of of a sandune, whether it's in a big desert or just on on your local beach, but those same patterns can be found in Mars, you know, so so the principles are truly universal.
• 1:06:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: some of the labels change.
• 1:06:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: So we still get our prevailing wins, you know, from from one direction wherever you are in the world.
• 1:06:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's just the label we put on either changes.
• 1:06:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: You also have a newsletter called The Sign of the Week.
• 1:06:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: Is this an email, a easing sort of a thing?
• 1:06:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it doesn't go out every week.
• 1:07:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's a little bit more sporadic than that.
• 1:07:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: But I typically find as when I get around to it.
• 1:07:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:07:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:07:09
  [SPEAKER_04]: But it might work on the one-man band.
• 1:07:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: My work, sometimes I'm not in front of a computer for a few weeks.
• 1:07:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, basically, I start with a photo.
• 1:07:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the question, which way we're looking on Southeast West,
• 1:07:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then I unpack the clues that are in the photo down the bottom and in between I'm giving up dates about books and the other things that help pay the bill.
• 1:07:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's fine.
• 1:07:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: How can people participate with this newsletter?
• 1:07:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you go on to National Avogator.com, there'll be a window that pops up and if it doesn't just down the bottom of the home page, you've got to just put in your first name and your email address and you'll get one as soon as I get round to it.
• 1:07:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, Tristan.
• 1:07:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm gonna do that because I want to I want to play this game.
• 1:07:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is great.
• 1:07:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, um, first of all, thank you very much for your time.
• 1:07:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: I do want to talk about weather, but that means we're going longer than we usually do and for people that don't have the time right now, just reload the episode later and you can you can listen to all of it, but
• 1:08:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: weather.
• 1:08:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so weather can help you with navigation as well, but just understanding what weather to expect can can really be valuable when you're in nature.
• 1:08:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, do you have some tips for us?
• 1:08:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do you discern what the weather is likely to do that day or the next day?
• 1:08:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: What do you do?
• 1:08:31
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, there's, I mean, in my book The Secret World of Weather I go into literally hundreds of the more sort of detailed signs, but they generally fit into families, which we can cover in broad terms now.
• 1:08:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: Wind direction, if you read any accounts of exploration or interesting travel from more than a hundred years ago, you will find wind direction pops up in
• 1:08:57
  [SPEAKER_04]: log books account, everything like that for the simple reason that since, you know, pre-history, we've known that the direction that the winds are coming from give us a very good steer in terms of the conditions we can expect and the probability of change.
• 1:09:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: So if you, you know, if you just monitor the direction the winds coming from, morning and late afternoon, and there is no significant change in that.
• 1:09:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: the probability of a massive change in the weather is very, very low.
• 1:09:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, so that's a nice big broad thing that our ancestors knew and that is not too tough.
• 1:09:34
  [SPEAKER_04]: Then what I'm typically doing is just adding layers to that.
• 1:09:37
  [SPEAKER_04]: A lot of this clues and sign reading is just putting two pieces together to come up with something a little bit richer and more interesting.
• 1:09:44
  [SPEAKER_04]: Birds perch facing into wind, they land and take off facing into wind.
• 1:09:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: So,
• 1:09:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you happen to notice all the birds facing one way in the morning and in a different way in the late afternoon, you might well have ran by breakfast on the following day because they are telling you that the wind direction is shifted significantly.
• 1:10:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: So of course.
• 1:10:04
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then we've got the whole family of clouds and that's, you know, I spent years and put together so much detail on that and there's, there are some broad trends, things step down as we go from dry to wet.
• 1:10:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: So at the very highest level, stars start twinkling more as the moisture level increases, you know, as we go from a dry blue sky type of,
• 1:10:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: you know, perhaps high pressure where the system, when there's a frontal or some significant change on the way, the will typically be moisture in the highest part of the chopper's fear first, and that makes stars twinkle more.
• 1:10:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: So,
• 1:10:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's that's that's the very early very sensitive sort of thing that's only people who are really really wanting to tune in I'm gonna spot that sort of thing, but the bigger bolder trends are that the typical stepping down of the cloud So we start with the the the wispy we call it candy floss here.
• 1:10:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: I just forget what it's called in your part of the world But uh, yes, yeah, there's serious clouds, but the what would you call it the what do you call candy floss the um The sort of fluffy stuff we we get them at fair.
• 1:11:08
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's it's sugar candy, but it's
• 1:11:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it doesn't cut and candy is kind of candy.
• 1:11:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you get those there's whiskey.
• 1:11:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: I see high clouds, which you can still see the sun through and typically it just steps down and you don't you don't even need to know that the names you just need to know if clouds are getting you know lower than then the the forecast
• 1:11:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: you'll typically start to sense wind direction changes as part of that process as well.
• 1:11:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: So you know, it goes, Sarah, Sarah Strauss, you know, out of Strauss, Nimbus Strauss, and you're getting wet at that point.
• 1:11:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: But whilst that's all going on, you're sensing wind direction changes, animal behavior changes, things like that.
• 1:11:47
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, there are, there are some big, bold things that signify change and within that, there are, you know, some of the most interesting stuff is,
• 1:12:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: So, cumulus clouds, the bubbly ones that you see at the start of the Simpsons, those are the opposite of random.
• 1:12:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: They are mapping something below them, typically high ground towns, dark Knifferous forests or islands, you know, the places that warm up fast.
• 1:12:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's because that's where the air is rising.
• 1:12:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's a really nice example of non-randomness and nature not lying because a cumulus cloud is sitting on top of a thermal.
• 1:12:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: There is no other way that they are formed.
• 1:12:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, there are different ways thermals are created, you know, but in weather terms, it's one area of the earth surface warming up fast and the other areas and that's not random.
• 1:12:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's not like one patch of the earth goes, oh, we haven't got hot for a few days.
• 1:12:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: Let's get hot.
• 1:12:43
  [SPEAKER_04]: It'll be because it's a town or a city which is typically hotter than the surrounding countryside or it's an island because land warms up faster than water under sunshine.
• 1:12:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: That sort of thing.
• 1:12:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, our ancestors would find the idea that you first sent land by seeing land from the sea absolutely hilariously incompetent.
• 1:13:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: You don't have to spend much time on the water or around mountains for that matter.
• 1:13:07
  [SPEAKER_04]: There's a whole family of clouds and you'll see many of them in Colorado that signify high ground even when you haven't seen the peak itself.
• 1:13:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, all of these clouds are making a map.
• 1:13:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's very, very interesting.
• 1:13:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, cumulonimbus is something in the American West.
• 1:13:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's a big deal because these are the thunderstorms that they bring hail, they bring lightning, and when you're mountaineering, the cumulonimbus.
• 1:13:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: But if the cumulonimbus clouds are forming, it's probably too late.
• 1:13:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: you should have headed down a while back.
• 1:13:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: But you get the the nimbus clouds forming and that means look out and then the cumulative nimbus are going to follow.
• 1:13:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: But what again confounds that a little bit here is that the the topography of the ground forces air to rise when there's prevailing wind.
• 1:13:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: So sometimes it's not just where things are warmer.
• 1:14:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's also where the mountain is pushing the air up.
• 1:14:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that cloud's to form as well.
• 1:14:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we get localized weather events.
• 1:14:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: You'll see storms form on the west side of a mountain, go over the peak and then dissipate as they go down the other side.
• 1:14:16
  [SPEAKER_04]: The meteorologist call it the sort of our or a graphic effect when you've got the force lifting by the the high ground.
• 1:14:22
  [SPEAKER_04]: But there are normally, um, uh, site.
• 1:14:25
  [SPEAKER_04]: So for it, for a thunderstorm to form, whether it's been pushed up by high ground or,
• 1:14:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: or by a thermal, you need an unstable atmosphere.
• 1:14:33
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the raw clues to that.
• 1:14:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: So thunderstorms are, again, they're not random.
• 1:14:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you look at a map of thunderstorm locations by month, for example, they're not randomly distributed.
• 1:14:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: Exactly as you're saying, these patches of high ground,
• 1:14:51
  [SPEAKER_04]: It doesn't matter whether you're North America or anywhere else, so that matter, you know, moist on stable air, hitting high ground leads to thunderstorms, but how do you tell it's on stable air?
• 1:15:02
  [SPEAKER_04]: Well,
• 1:15:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: If there are no clouds at all in the sky, a thunderstorm being the first thing you see is quite unlikely.
• 1:15:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: Because there has to be some moisture in the atmosphere for a thunderstorm to form.
• 1:15:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: So what we're looking for there is signs that the atmosphere is unstable, which just means that clouds can go into vertical kind of runaway.
• 1:15:23
  [SPEAKER_04]: And the signs of that is any clouds particularly in the day that are taller than they are wide, because that is an unstable atmosphere.
• 1:15:32
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, storms conform very, very fast and I don't want to give people the impression that a blue sky means you're safe, but what I'm saying is it is more the opposite.
• 1:15:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's more if if it's sort of 10 30 in the morning, you see a tearing cumulus, you know, bubbling clouds are definitely tall and they are wide, you know, that is a sign of an unstable atmosphere.
• 1:15:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: So if you're heading into the mountains and you've seen that in the morning, you know, it's a high risk situation.
• 1:16:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: interesting.
• 1:16:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: What about inticular clouds?
• 1:16:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: First of all, look, look, look, look.
• 1:16:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, they're nicknamed flying source or a UFO cloud.
• 1:16:10
  [SPEAKER_04]: And there is sort of a general version of what we've been talking about there.
• 1:16:14
  [SPEAKER_04]: So instead of an unstable atmosphere where things can go into runaway and lead to terrible storms, the lenticular clouds are where you've got air being forced over a summit, typically.
• 1:16:27
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's being pushed up to a level.
• 1:16:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's expanding cooling, leading to condensation,
• 1:16:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: then it dips back down, compresses warms and disappears.
• 1:16:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's something we will all have seen many many times.
• 1:16:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's not a particularly strong sign of weather to come.
• 1:16:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's not telling you things are going to get better or worse, for example.
• 1:16:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: In weather times, I don't know if the right adjective is sensitive or fragile, but what I mean is they will disappear if there's a significant change in wind speed or direction typically.
• 1:16:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: So if you see them forming and they don't change
• 1:17:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: you know it's very unlikely something something dramatic about to happen that they're saying the air flows fairly steady.
• 1:17:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know something that's interesting is they they often look like they're not moving.
• 1:17:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: But what you're seeing is the condensation and that's happening in one place.
• 1:17:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: The air is still moving, but the cloud is forming because of the pressure differentials and because of the wind.
• 1:17:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Essentially, I've interviewed like paragliders, who'll go through a lenticular cloud and find that there's a 60 mile per hour updraft right through the cloud that doesn't appear to be moving.
• 1:17:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yes, absolutely.
• 1:17:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's fascinating, too.
• 1:17:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's a really good example of where these patterns are universal.
• 1:17:41
  [SPEAKER_04]: And once you get used to seeing them in one context, you recognize them very quickly in another.
• 1:17:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: So for example, what we're talking about there in physics terms is a standing wave, which is where the atoms and molecules are constantly changing, but the pattern we see isn't.
• 1:17:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: You see exactly the same thing in water.
• 1:18:01
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you look at white water,
• 1:18:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, kayakers will be all over this, but basically, as water hits a boulder and obstruction, it gets forced up in this way that you can spot, but only if you're sensitive to it into a pattern called a pillow.
• 1:18:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: But then the water will plunge down the other side of the stone and it punches what's known as a hole because it is literally a hole, it punches a hole.
• 1:18:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Now, water doesn't like holes.
• 1:18:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's constantly trying to reach equilibrium.
• 1:18:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: So what you find is water will try and fill the hole from the downstream side.
• 1:18:35
  [SPEAKER_04]: And that sets up a standing wave.
• 1:18:36
  [SPEAKER_04]: You don't need to travel far.
• 1:18:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: If you look over a bridge at any stream or river that's got a bit of white water in it, doesn't need to be ground wrappers or anything.
• 1:18:45
  [SPEAKER_04]: just where you can hear the water, which is a sign of white water, any kind, even if it's small.
• 1:18:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: You will see these standing waves, and again the wave doesn't appear to move anywhere.
• 1:18:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: So long as the flow and the obstruction stay constant, the wave will stay there, and it's a standing wave.
• 1:18:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Every water molecule is constantly changing, but the shape says the same.
• 1:19:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you have hundreds or thousands of gallons per minute that are flowing through there but it looks like it's it's just staying there just kind of underlating right that's that's fascinating interesting okay a lot of people have heard the old adage read in the morning sailors warning read at night sailors delight we have issues with that in our modern day, but what is that about?
• 1:19:29
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the red in the morning is less clear, cut, and the red sky at night, shepherds will sail as delight.
• 1:19:39
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's fairly straightforward, it's not a cast iron guarantee, but if you can see the sunset by definition, you can see far to the west.
• 1:19:49
  [SPEAKER_04]: and most weather in the temperate zones comes from the west.
• 1:19:54
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it's basically, you know that experience when the weather's bad, you really can't see very far.
• 1:19:59
  [SPEAKER_04]: Not only, you know, you're not seeing sun, you can't see horizontal, very far.
• 1:20:03
  [SPEAKER_04]: So if you are seeing a red sky at night, you are seeing many, many miles through clear air to the west, it's as simple as that.
• 1:20:12
  [SPEAKER_04]: And it's, you know, that's not to say,
• 1:20:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: Uh, the, the, the, the calm be bad, whether it's just a probability thing.
• 1:20:18
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, if you can see many, many miles to the west, which is where most are where there comes from the visibility is good in the direction or where there comes from QED, the forecast is not bad.
• 1:20:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: You have noticed that air pollution impacts that went a little bit too.
• 1:20:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's that's why mentioned our modern world because if you have a bad smog layer to the west,
• 1:20:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're going to get that red in it might be, but only if you can see the sun.
• 1:20:46
  [SPEAKER_04]: So it'll change the colors, but it won't change.
• 1:20:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: It shouldn't change the general diagnostics.
• 1:20:52
  [SPEAKER_04]: Because there's a bit of a...
• 1:20:53
  [SPEAKER_04]: So in the hidden seasons, for example, I talk about how the sun sets are seasonal.
• 1:20:58
  [SPEAKER_04]: So we get, for example, at harvest time, you know, if you've got a lot of arable crops in your part of the world, you are at harvest time, there's just going to be a lot of dust in the air and the sun sets are not necessarily red or then.
• 1:21:11
  [SPEAKER_04]: lots of other places will have seasonal fires.
• 1:21:15
  [SPEAKER_04]: We've mentioned fire.
• 1:21:17
  [SPEAKER_04]: You've got a lot of smoke particles in the air.
• 1:21:19
  [SPEAKER_04]: The sun sets change.
• 1:21:20
  [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, we had a red moon visible from the UK and all over Europe, from forest fires in North America last year.
• 1:21:28
  [SPEAKER_04]: I think that might have been the year before, but quite recently, all it takes is that it has some particles in the atmosphere and the colours change because the blues will get bounced out by the scattering more than
• 1:21:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, we had days last summer when you could look at the sun bear-eyed without burning your eyes.
• 1:21:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because it was so obscured, the opacity of the smoke was so high.
• 1:21:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's eerie, not that I would recommend looking at the sun.
• 1:21:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: But there's a related dynamic that I want to mention because it's been very helpful for me.
• 1:22:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that is that high pressure air tends to hold more dust and pollutants in it.
• 1:22:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And low pressure air tends to be clearer.
• 1:22:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so on a
• 1:22:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: On a morning in Colorado when you're climbing a 14er and you've got the perfect blue bird sky you can see forever It's crystal clear.
• 1:22:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: You think what a beautiful day Look out because that's a low pressure system And yes, storms gonna roll in
• 1:22:26
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, and that's not one of come across, but it makes, it makes good sense.
• 1:22:30
  [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the high pressure, it's a lead on things, sinking air, low pressure is typically yeah, as a sending.
• 1:22:38
  [SPEAKER_04]: So I mean, that's interesting, you know, on a totally different scale.
• 1:22:40
  [SPEAKER_04]: That's why the deserts are where they are.
• 1:22:42
  [SPEAKER_04]: You know, most people were kind of imagine, well, the equator's getting hit with more solar energy than anywhere else on planet earth.
• 1:22:48
  [SPEAKER_04]: So why don't we have the deserts there?
• 1:22:50
  [SPEAKER_04]: It's for that reason you're talking about there, which is, you have most of the instability and rising near the equator, but that leads to lots of tropical storms.
• 1:23:00
  [SPEAKER_04]: And then the air is sinking, much, much higher latitudes both north and south, but it's super dry.
• 1:23:06
  [SPEAKER_04]: Hence, the Sahara desert isn't on the equator.
• 1:23:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, Tristan, this has been fascinating and I love the conversation about weather.
• 1:23:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: We could probably talk for three more hours just about weather itself.
• 1:23:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: But some of these things just become kind of second nature like you were talking about when you open your eyes and observe.
• 1:23:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so, man, we could go on forever about this stuff.
• 1:23:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Again,
• 1:23:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: uh... go to natural navigator dot com and from there i'll bet you can find everything else to get a hold of tristan and to learn about what he's been working on tristan gooey thank you very much for your time today it's been really fun and very thank you so much uh... really really enjoyed our chat and uh... yeah keep up the uh... keep out the great work with the podcast it's really good fun
• 1:23:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 1:23:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks.
• 1:23:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Everyone start observing nature more because that way you can hold the hand get out there and have some fun