Podcast Summary: How to Read Nature – Awaken Your Senses to the Outdoors with Tristan Gooley

Summary:
– You can use nature to navigate. Watching the stars, the trees, etc.

– Inuit can look at snow and tell what direction they are.

– The wind can tell you lots too. The shallower angle of the land will tell you it’s the side the wind is coming from (Paras note: If my primary school memory serves well that would be the windward side) and the steeper shape is where the wind is leaving (leeward side).

– Swells in water will tell you where to find land.

– Next time you’re sitting in your office looking out, think about where north is. Where is the wind blow. Where are the birds flying and at what time are they doing the same thing?

– Nomads figured out migration patterns to learn this. Humans in the city migrate at a much smaller and faster rate. The same crowd will go one way in the day and opposite at the end.

The SORTED Method:
S – Shape. Ground, higher hills and valleys.
O – Ology. What is in the ground. Acidic, sandy, etc. Higher ground and sandy soil maybe the sea is close.
R – Roots. Human foot print etc.
T – Tracks. Who else is out there. Where are the foot prints going? What kind of tracks, sports shoes? Tractor wheels? Roads.
E – Edges. Most stuff happens at edges. See Permaculture for more as they use Edges a lot!
D – Detail. You add it all up and broad brush way of saying what is in the ground. You know all these details so what can you work out?

– Trees can tell you direction from how they’re reaching out to the light. They’ll grow more vertically on the northern side and more horizontally on the southern side. (That’s if you’re America). It’s subtle but when you look for it, it will be right there in your radar. Deciduous trees will shed leaves in winter so the leaves on the north side will grow bigger, darker in colour and thinner. They grow more roots in the direction the wind is coming from. If you see most trees they’ll have some roots above the ground which are called guide roots that help stop the tree blowing over because of the wind.

– In most woodland the trees back are different colour on each tree. It’s subtle again. Notice when you look one way they’re a certain colour and the other way they’re a different colour.

– Look at the very tops of the trees especially trimmed ones.

– There is also a detailed line where a forest starts as the plants change from city to wilderness. Notice unnatural shapes.

– Mushrooms, mosses, algae don’t live in isolation.

– Some trees establish themselves slowly. They will bully some others out as they grow. Special trees collaborate with specific fungi to help each other thrive.

– The sky reflects part of the Earth back at you. Types of clouds will tell you. Halo around the sun means specific clouds are coming and weather is about to change.

– There is a smokey smell and if you really listen. It could be the heat from the top of a mountain is trapping the cold in at the bottom. In this case you can hear sounds and smell aromas much stronger as they are trapped in that layer.

There are 850 things to look for in Tristians Book

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