Hope everyone is having a great week!
Unlike our ancestors, we’re no longer reliant on nature to find our way through the landscape without getting lost. Most of us carry mobile phones with pinpoint-accurate GPS in the areas we tend to explore for recreation.
While they’re never a fail-safe substitute for a map and compass, they are becoming more reliable as technology improves. On a recent trip to the forests of the Arctic north, we were able to pull up a topographical map to identify flat ground—before we even started digging through the snow!
The following techniques are simple but effective—and you never know, they might just come in handy if your phone battery dies.
"Sunrise in the east, sunset in the west"—it’s a good general rule, but there’s a bit of wiggle room. It’s only exactly true on the equinoxes in March and September. By midsummer, the sun rises more to the northeast, and by midwinter, more to the southeast—a swing of about 90 degrees. One useful takeaway is that, no matter the time of year, the sun will always be to the south at noon (GMT).
When it’s in its crescent phase, you can imagine a line connecting the two tips (or "horns") of the crescent, and then extend that line down to the horizon. Where it touches the horizon gives you a rough indication of south—and the lower the moon is in the sky, the more accurate this method becomes.
The night sky gives us a few helpful clues in the Northern Hemisphere, and two of the best-known rely on the North Star—Polaris. This star stays fixed in the sky and sits at a height that matches your latitude. In the UK, that means Polaris will be about 51 degrees above the horizon. But with so many stars up there, how do you spot the right one?
The Big Dipper—also known as the Plough or part of the Great Bear constellation—looks like a large pan in the sky. To find Polaris (the North Star), locate the two stars that form the outer edge of the “pan” (the end lip), then draw an imaginary line through them and extend it outwards. The first bright star you come to along that line is Polaris.
Cassiopeia is another useful constellation. It looks like a squiggly or uneven “W” and sits almost opposite the Big Dipper in the sky. To use it, connect the three stars that form the top of the “W,” then extend a line upwards at 90 degrees. I like to picture a capital “L” sitting on top of the “W”—follow that line roughly five times the width of the “W” and you should reach Polaris (the North Star).
Nature can guide us—if we know where to look—and lone trees are a great place to start. Find a mature tree standing in an open field or away from the forest edge. You might notice that the branches on one side grow more vertically, while on the other side they spread out almost horizontally. This “tick” effect happens because the tree grows toward the path of the sun as it moves across the sky. In the Northern Hemisphere, this means the horizontal branches usually point south.
I hope this short guide was useful. There are countless other signs we can pick up from the world around us—once we know what to look for. If you're keen to learn more about navigating using natural signs, I highly recommend checking out Tristan Gooley, The Natural Navigator. He’s a true expert in the field and shares a wealth of practical knowledge.
📖 Tristan Gooley's book: The Natural Navigator on Amazon
🌐 Website: https://www.naturalnavigator.com/
