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Natural Navigation
How To Read Water: Clues & Patterns from Puddles to the Sea
A must-have book for walkers, sailors, swimmers, anglers and everyone interested in the natural world, in How To Read Water, Natural Navigator Tristan Gooley shares knowledge, skills, tips and useful observations to help you enjoy the landscape around you and learn about the magic of the outdoors from your living room.
Includes over 700 clues, signs and patterns. From wild swimming in Sussex to wayfinding in Oman, via the icy mysteries of the Arctic, Tristan Gooley draws on his own pioneering journeys to reveal the secrets of ponds, puddles, rivers, oceans and more to show us all the skills we need to read the water around us.
Includes over 700 clues, signs and patterns. From wild swimming in Sussex to wayfinding in Oman, via the icy mysteries of the Arctic, Tristan Gooley draws on his own pioneering journeys to reveal the secrets of ponds, puddles, rivers, oceans and more to show us all the skills we need to read the water around us.
426 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2016
1413 people are currently reading
7218 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 253 reviews
January 10, 2018
Ok, seriously, this was 100% not what I expected. I read the first few pages in a bookstore, then bought it on Kindle (sorry, McKenzie's Books). I thought I was getting a book on oceans, and lakes, and geology, and natural history. I was in no way expecting all the stuff about yachting.
Like so much of the nautical world, there is a simple code to be broken before we can enjoy reading Plimsoll Lines. There are usually two main parts to these lines. There is the vertical ruler, which is the key part, and alongside these vertical markings you will usually see some letters, like, TF, F, S, W, WNA. These letters are abbreviations for water types, Tropical Fresh, Fresh, Summer, Winter, Winter North Atlantic.
Or naval signaling.
A dark cone pointing downwards means a sailing vessel that is using its engine (only important because the rights of way for a sailing vessel change when its engine is used). Three dark balls, one on top of the other, mean that the vessel has run aground. And my personal favourite, just for its surreal blend of traditional elegance and contemporary horror: three dark balls, one at the masthead, and one at each end of the foreyard means � a vessel engaged in mine clearance.
Or navigation by sextant.
I would like you to find a lamppost and to stand underneath it. What angle is this light above the street? Answer: 90 degrees. Which means that if you called me and told me that you had taken a ‘sight� of this light and it was 90 degrees, I could tell you with certainty that you were standing exactly underneath that light. Next, if you took five steps away from the light and gauged its angle above the street, you might come up with something like 70 degrees. The light appears lower, the further you are from it. And that in a nutshell is almost all you need to know about how celestial navigation works. Let me demonstrate with a strange thought experiment. Imagine I called you on your mobile and asked you to stand somewhere on the street and tell me the angle that a streetlight we both know is above the ground. Whatever your answer, I would then be able to gauge roughly how far you were from that light. If you said the light was 50 degrees above the pavement I would say that I think you are 12 paces from the light (it’s not magic, just trigonometry).
And, yes, all these things are in some way related to water, but as a whole, it took me in an unexpected direction.
I loved the chapter on trout fishing, and on river currents and patterns, especially as I just moved to live next to a river, and I've spent my life by the ocean. But my enjoyment of the book evaporated before halfway when Gooley started discussing the wind. This in itself was a fine diversion, but I expected we would get back to water. Instead we spent most of the rest of the book reminiscing about his yachting experiences.
I totally sound like one of those whiny readers, but if I'd understood I was buying a book on yachting, and wanted a book on yachting, with some aspects of water thrown in for good measure, I would have enjoyed the book a lot more.
Like so much of the nautical world, there is a simple code to be broken before we can enjoy reading Plimsoll Lines. There are usually two main parts to these lines. There is the vertical ruler, which is the key part, and alongside these vertical markings you will usually see some letters, like, TF, F, S, W, WNA. These letters are abbreviations for water types, Tropical Fresh, Fresh, Summer, Winter, Winter North Atlantic.
Or naval signaling.
A dark cone pointing downwards means a sailing vessel that is using its engine (only important because the rights of way for a sailing vessel change when its engine is used). Three dark balls, one on top of the other, mean that the vessel has run aground. And my personal favourite, just for its surreal blend of traditional elegance and contemporary horror: three dark balls, one at the masthead, and one at each end of the foreyard means � a vessel engaged in mine clearance.
Or navigation by sextant.
I would like you to find a lamppost and to stand underneath it. What angle is this light above the street? Answer: 90 degrees. Which means that if you called me and told me that you had taken a ‘sight� of this light and it was 90 degrees, I could tell you with certainty that you were standing exactly underneath that light. Next, if you took five steps away from the light and gauged its angle above the street, you might come up with something like 70 degrees. The light appears lower, the further you are from it. And that in a nutshell is almost all you need to know about how celestial navigation works. Let me demonstrate with a strange thought experiment. Imagine I called you on your mobile and asked you to stand somewhere on the street and tell me the angle that a streetlight we both know is above the ground. Whatever your answer, I would then be able to gauge roughly how far you were from that light. If you said the light was 50 degrees above the pavement I would say that I think you are 12 paces from the light (it’s not magic, just trigonometry).
And, yes, all these things are in some way related to water, but as a whole, it took me in an unexpected direction.
I loved the chapter on trout fishing, and on river currents and patterns, especially as I just moved to live next to a river, and I've spent my life by the ocean. But my enjoyment of the book evaporated before halfway when Gooley started discussing the wind. This in itself was a fine diversion, but I expected we would get back to water. Instead we spent most of the rest of the book reminiscing about his yachting experiences.
I totally sound like one of those whiny readers, but if I'd understood I was buying a book on yachting, and wanted a book on yachting, with some aspects of water thrown in for good measure, I would have enjoyed the book a lot more.
February 6, 2017
This is an essential book if you want to understand everything about water and what it signifies. I can't think of anything that isn't covered. The book is beautifully written and approaches being lyrical at times. It's a book that I will return to often.
September 18, 2019
If I could give this book 10 stars I would! I picked it up in a small bookstore in Perham, Minnesota and because I loved the illustrations, the size and weight of the volume, I was sorely tempted to buy it. However, I am in the “purging� phase of life and am loathe to own anything more. I therefore borrowed it through my local library’s Libby app. Nonetheless, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.
The author not only teaches the reader to read water by looking at it, but he also imparts wisdom from seafarers past and present who used the sound and feel of the water on their vessels to navigate. He also discusses water’s attendant flora and fauna; who knew insects could tell us so much about water?
Do you want to know the origin of the term “tell-tail�? Read the book to find out!
The author not only teaches the reader to read water by looking at it, but he also imparts wisdom from seafarers past and present who used the sound and feel of the water on their vessels to navigate. He also discusses water’s attendant flora and fauna; who knew insects could tell us so much about water?
Do you want to know the origin of the term “tell-tail�? Read the book to find out!
July 10, 2016
Cooley's writing wasn't as fine-tuned as I would have liked, which made his descriptions of the "scientific" and/or "technical" properties and behaviors of water much less compelling. It didn't help that every other sentence included either a) a major comma splice, or b) a strange invitation to "look! See what happens when you such-and-such the water and it does this?" because... well, you know, NO, I can't. That shit works for Bill Nye and Alton Brown, but not for static media like printed texts (sorry for the buzz phrase "static media" that I effectively just made up right now).
From a stylistic as well as a grammatical standpoint, this book needs a lot of help... which sucks! The book otherwise had so much water potential! (haaaaaaaaaaaaa, oh my god, ). Perhaps a revised version will pop up here in a year or two and I'll give it another shot then.
From a stylistic as well as a grammatical standpoint, this book needs a lot of help... which sucks! The book otherwise had so much water potential! (haaaaaaaaaaaaa, oh my god, ). Perhaps a revised version will pop up here in a year or two and I'll give it another shot then.
November 11, 2016
This book goes on to "the best I've ever read about anything" shelf. I learned so much about the world around me. What seems like the simplest things: water, weeds, trees, the sky.... But Gooley's detailed observations and explanation of HOW EVERYTHING FITS TOGETHER and how we can see it if we JUST LOOK. The emphasis is mine. He writes gently and slowly as a stroll around a pond in autumn. I kept renewing the library book so I could read it slowly and re-read parts. I loved it.
November 4, 2017
I thought this book was fascinating! I've always had a fascination with water. I love waterfalls and rivers and lately, I've been intrigued by sailing. This book was filled with little nuggets of cool things to look for among all kinds of water, the effects of the wind, the rotation of the earth, the rocks underneath the water, etc. When we look at water, often we just see the beauty or the power of the water, but there's so much more, and the author really does a good job to showing you other things to look for that are very subtle, yet really cool.
I didn't give it 5 stars because I felt like the book was a little too long. Yes, there's a lot of ground to cover, but there's also scattered personal stories and comments which sometimes I liked and sometimes I felt was unnecessarily adding to the length of the book. The chapter on the fly fishing also wasn't that interesting for me personally. It had some interesting observations, but that's one area that I'm sure I will never have the opportunity nor the interest to pursue. I was about to feel that way about the sailing signals, but then it turns out I enjoyed that chapter more than I thought I would. There's a whole world of almost "secret code" to learn when it comes to sailing!
I admit, sometimes it took me a while for my brain to grasp some of the scientific concepts. I had to read and re-read. The diagrams definitely helped! I also loved the folklore about cultures and people who relied on these water clues to navigate. There's a lot that is no longer 'necessary' due to today's technology, but it's amazing that they could navigate so well without these advanced gadgets in the past.
I didn't give it 5 stars because I felt like the book was a little too long. Yes, there's a lot of ground to cover, but there's also scattered personal stories and comments which sometimes I liked and sometimes I felt was unnecessarily adding to the length of the book. The chapter on the fly fishing also wasn't that interesting for me personally. It had some interesting observations, but that's one area that I'm sure I will never have the opportunity nor the interest to pursue. I was about to feel that way about the sailing signals, but then it turns out I enjoyed that chapter more than I thought I would. There's a whole world of almost "secret code" to learn when it comes to sailing!
I admit, sometimes it took me a while for my brain to grasp some of the scientific concepts. I had to read and re-read. The diagrams definitely helped! I also loved the folklore about cultures and people who relied on these water clues to navigate. There's a lot that is no longer 'necessary' due to today's technology, but it's amazing that they could navigate so well without these advanced gadgets in the past.
November 16, 2019
Very quirky, a bit of a slog in places, but full of enough memorable tidbits to be worth it.
November 2, 2021
If this book was a body of water it would be a mud puddle.
There's some interesting stuff in here but it's buried under a lot of guff.
It's also British centric and focused heavily on the topside (as in the Northern hemisphere). All the navigational tips about finding the North Star are absolutely useless for those of us living in the upside down. There's no mention of our mighty Southern Cross. I accept that the book probably would have become more clunky constantly doing north and south comparisons. It's just that there was a lot of puffery about Polynesian navigators and their unbelievable techniques, yet little to no practical exploration of the techniques. If you're going to keep telling us how Polynesians are the greatest navigators of all time then prove it. I also think we could have done with some more talk about modern navigational techniques and the longitude problem.
The big issue with the book is that despite Gooley's enthusiasm for the environment and passion for learning, there's a lack of academic rigour. Gooley wants to know and understand the old ways but he wants to know them in the sort of oral tradition they were originally taught. This doesn't lend itself to a book. I'm sure if you sat down with Gooley next to a crackling fire on a remote beach somewhere he could turn you into a navigational whiz in a few days. Unfortunately, I just don't think the uncle Gooley approach works so well in book format.
There were also a lot of digressions from water and how to read it, many times I felt I'd been swindled. The book completely loses its way towards the end which is ironic because this is when we start dealing more with Gooley's own wayfinding journeys in the artic circle and around the UK. These are interesting but don't really add a huge amount to the topic at hand.
A strong editor probably could have drawn a coherent book out of these troubled waters. As it stands the reader needs to be a navigational savant to steer safely through this book.
There's some interesting stuff in here but it's buried under a lot of guff.
It's also British centric and focused heavily on the topside (as in the Northern hemisphere). All the navigational tips about finding the North Star are absolutely useless for those of us living in the upside down. There's no mention of our mighty Southern Cross. I accept that the book probably would have become more clunky constantly doing north and south comparisons. It's just that there was a lot of puffery about Polynesian navigators and their unbelievable techniques, yet little to no practical exploration of the techniques. If you're going to keep telling us how Polynesians are the greatest navigators of all time then prove it. I also think we could have done with some more talk about modern navigational techniques and the longitude problem.
The big issue with the book is that despite Gooley's enthusiasm for the environment and passion for learning, there's a lack of academic rigour. Gooley wants to know and understand the old ways but he wants to know them in the sort of oral tradition they were originally taught. This doesn't lend itself to a book. I'm sure if you sat down with Gooley next to a crackling fire on a remote beach somewhere he could turn you into a navigational whiz in a few days. Unfortunately, I just don't think the uncle Gooley approach works so well in book format.
There were also a lot of digressions from water and how to read it, many times I felt I'd been swindled. The book completely loses its way towards the end which is ironic because this is when we start dealing more with Gooley's own wayfinding journeys in the artic circle and around the UK. These are interesting but don't really add a huge amount to the topic at hand.
A strong editor probably could have drawn a coherent book out of these troubled waters. As it stands the reader needs to be a navigational savant to steer safely through this book.
June 15, 2021
I saw this book at a little bookstore a few weeks back, and, since both the title and the cover were attractive, put it on my "get at the library" list. I figured it probably wouldn't be my sort of book, but it might be my husband's, and as a dutiful wife I should put forth some effort to understand the things he loves even when I will never love them. Like sailing. But honestly, I expected to read a few chapters, skim the rest, and then hand it to him with a, "you'd like this." (Giving people books is how I say 'I love you'.)
Instead, I found myself really enjoying reading it. Gooley is a gifted author, and his passion for the subject (understanding nature--in this book he focuses on water) can't help but sweep you along, making you wish you could see puddles and waves the way he does. It took me less than half of the book to decide we needed our own copy, and ended up buying two more of his as well. (In my defense, they're all really pretty and make a fabulous-looking set, and if they're half as good as this one, they'll be worth referencing.)
This is one book I'll definitely be giving to my kids to read, and the sooner the better, I think. It's the sort of thing that would (at least in small doses, from the right chapters) spark their imagination and inspire them to go tromping through our woods, searching out signs of streams and puddles in the plant and animal life.
Instead, I found myself really enjoying reading it. Gooley is a gifted author, and his passion for the subject (understanding nature--in this book he focuses on water) can't help but sweep you along, making you wish you could see puddles and waves the way he does. It took me less than half of the book to decide we needed our own copy, and ended up buying two more of his as well. (In my defense, they're all really pretty and make a fabulous-looking set, and if they're half as good as this one, they'll be worth referencing.)
This is one book I'll definitely be giving to my kids to read, and the sooner the better, I think. It's the sort of thing that would (at least in small doses, from the right chapters) spark their imagination and inspire them to go tromping through our woods, searching out signs of streams and puddles in the plant and animal life.
September 27, 2021
Thoroughly entertaining. The style is breezy, the anecdotes are well-chosen, the balance between theory and personal experience is nicely judged. Not, perhaps, a scientific book, but then there are already enough dry books about water.
September 8, 2019
hhhhhhhhhhhell yeah
October 28, 2020
It is a charming read to realiize we are surrounded by water in various shapes and forms and don't know how to appreciate what we are seeing.Ìý It is like being in a library and not knowing how to read.Ìý Some of the things touched on included: giraffes being the only mammal that can't swim; raindrops are pancake shaped not pear shaped; size of raindrops determines width of colours in a rainbow; puddles can tell you direction and what lies in the earth below; wave formation on the ocean can reveal the presence of islands, even if you can's see land; if you can count ten or more birds in a five minute period you are no more than forty miles from land; there is a moment just after sunset (or before sunrise) when the red and yellow parts of sunlight cannot bend over the horizon, but the blues bend too much, and you may see a burst of green on the horizon*; whatever boat you are on, no matter how fast you are travelling, the wake will be at a 40° angle; the number of degrees Polaris is above the horizon is the latitude you are at; and by the 1830s there were more than two shipwrecks a day in the British Isles (before preventative measures were taken).Ìý Wrecks spawned their own lingo: flotsam is floating cargo, jetsam has been thrown overboard, ligan is wreckage lying on the seabed, and derelict is unretrievable.
* i have seen this from a plane; it is not so much a flash as one moment its there and the next it is gone
Other interesting facts:
· the sun and moon together can only lift the tide by 18 inches; anything more dramatic is account of land formations
· the moon, being 400 times closer than the sun, has twice the pull, even though the sun is 27 million times more massive
· on the K'au coast of Hawaii loved ones lost at sea were sorted by the tides where rich (fat people) landed on one beach and poor (thin people) on another
· rubber boots lost in the North Sea had currents deposit left boots in Holland and right boots in Scotland
· 28,800 rubber ducks dumped at the same place at sea ended up ten months later anywhere from Hawaii to Iceland
· only in Force 8 winds (not higher or lower) will spindrift occur (where the crest of a wave is whipped off as white spray)
· once the depth of water is half the wavelength, the wave slows down
· birch trees like some oaks and willows hold onto their lower leaves in winter; this is called marcescence
· tree branches grow more horizontally on the south side of trees and more vertically on the north sides
· green reflected under clouds indicates land (vegetation) in that direction
· Pacific Islanders use underwater light flashes (called te lapa) to detect distant islands (100 miles away)
* i have seen this from a plane; it is not so much a flash as one moment its there and the next it is gone
Other interesting facts:
· the sun and moon together can only lift the tide by 18 inches; anything more dramatic is account of land formations
· the moon, being 400 times closer than the sun, has twice the pull, even though the sun is 27 million times more massive
· on the K'au coast of Hawaii loved ones lost at sea were sorted by the tides where rich (fat people) landed on one beach and poor (thin people) on another
· rubber boots lost in the North Sea had currents deposit left boots in Holland and right boots in Scotland
· 28,800 rubber ducks dumped at the same place at sea ended up ten months later anywhere from Hawaii to Iceland
· only in Force 8 winds (not higher or lower) will spindrift occur (where the crest of a wave is whipped off as white spray)
· once the depth of water is half the wavelength, the wave slows down
· birch trees like some oaks and willows hold onto their lower leaves in winter; this is called marcescence
· tree branches grow more horizontally on the south side of trees and more vertically on the north sides
· green reflected under clouds indicates land (vegetation) in that direction
· Pacific Islanders use underwater light flashes (called te lapa) to detect distant islands (100 miles away)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 2, 2017
I really enjoyed slowly savoring this book while finishing up a degree in oceanography. I loved everything from Gooley's whimsical writing style to the eye-opening descriptions of how to decode signs in and near water. It was fascinating reading about things I already understood mathematically from an outdoorsman and navigator's perspective. Definitely referring back to this book often.
August 8, 2018
Not a big fan and didn't draw me in. Needed editing to about 2/3 of its length. Not quite sure why he is so popular.
August 25, 2020
Tristan Gooley führt in die Sprache des Wassers ein! Er erklärt wie Gerüche, Wasseroberfläche, Temperatur uns Zeichen über unsere Umgebung geben können.
Welche Zeichen gibt es im Wasser, die uns bei der Suche nach Land behilflich sein können? Wie ist die Wasserqualität? Wie entstehen Wellen?
Ein Buch, dass einem mal wieder die Selbstverständlichkeit mit der wir die Dinge betrachten, nimmt. Jetzt kann ich mir Pfützen anschauen und etwas über den tiefen Boden unter mir sagen! Wer die Welt des Wassers verstehen möchte, der sollte dieses Buch lesen
Welche Zeichen gibt es im Wasser, die uns bei der Suche nach Land behilflich sein können? Wie ist die Wasserqualität? Wie entstehen Wellen?
Ein Buch, dass einem mal wieder die Selbstverständlichkeit mit der wir die Dinge betrachten, nimmt. Jetzt kann ich mir Pfützen anschauen und etwas über den tiefen Boden unter mir sagen! Wer die Welt des Wassers verstehen möchte, der sollte dieses Buch lesen
July 15, 2018
A delightfully nerdy book on all manner and types of water (and how you can use what you know about local water to inform and navigate larger bodies of water), which means I loved it. This would make a great addition to any outdoor education curriculum, and also made me want to learn how to sail. (I already wanted to learn, but this book confirmed that curiosity for me.)
I marked so many pages of this book to come back to, for inspiration, for knowledge, and for fun. Definitely one I'm happy to own (we picked it up in a bookstore in the middle of the desert, which I also love), and that I'll be coming back to reference soon.
My only criticism, really, is that it could have been more tightly edited. I agree with a handful of other reviews I've seen that this book likely didn't need to be as long as it was, and while certain chapters were mesmerizing, there were certainly a few that hung on too long.
[Four stars for puddles, tides, ripples, glitter paths, and drops of humor in nearly every chapter.]
I marked so many pages of this book to come back to, for inspiration, for knowledge, and for fun. Definitely one I'm happy to own (we picked it up in a bookstore in the middle of the desert, which I also love), and that I'll be coming back to reference soon.
My only criticism, really, is that it could have been more tightly edited. I agree with a handful of other reviews I've seen that this book likely didn't need to be as long as it was, and while certain chapters were mesmerizing, there were certainly a few that hung on too long.
[Four stars for puddles, tides, ripples, glitter paths, and drops of humor in nearly every chapter.]
September 28, 2019
I love facts. In Gooley's entertaining book, I learned which mammal can't swim, the difference between a wave and a swell, and how to use your fist as a sextant. While I was enjoying the book, I was lucky enough to be on vacation at the beach where I could observe both the spectacularly crashing ocean waves and the tidal pools left behind at high tide (which, by the way, I now know the origin of, plus the meaning of neap tide.) My newly-acquired "water whisperer" skills are causing me to look at my world differently and, when NPR's Science Friday discussed the effect of global warming on the Earth's ocean currents, I (half-way) knew what they were talking about. This is a big win for me, a traditional give-me-math-over-science woman. I highly recommend the book, which is made even more charming by Gooley's enthusiasm for his subject.
October 24, 2019
The book captivated me at the start. The style was fleeting, occasionally poetic, occasionally rough. I value the knowledge laid out in the book and that's also the reason for the rating. If I'd focus on the style, I'd rate it lower.
It's got nice pictures and phenomena well described. It feels like a secret skill to be able to tell the weather forecast from a puddle of water or know where to search water from a desert by observing birds.
Highly practical. Good stuff.
It's got nice pictures and phenomena well described. It feels like a secret skill to be able to tell the weather forecast from a puddle of water or know where to search water from a desert by observing birds.
Highly practical. Good stuff.
April 12, 2018
Good if you live a rich Englishman’s life, otherwise quite condescending.
September 21, 2022
this book is unbelievable
June 30, 2023
A pleasantly slow read. Leave it on a side table and read a chapter here and there and then go outside to a river or lake and see if you can identify the water characteristics. I’ll return to this book again in the future to re-learn key topics and will most likely fill it with post-its.
January 1, 2019
Barzo ciekawa ksiązka, chociaż chwilami trochę zbyt techniczna. Ale i tak warto! Dzięki Joanka za prezent :)
March 25, 2023
Took me awhile to get through this one since it’s so rich with information, and now I feel like I need to start over and read it again if I want to commit any of the tricks to memory. But I sure did love the feeling of being able to notice something I never noticed or understood before. It’s not a bad feeling at all
September 15, 2024
WE CAN LOOK at the same stretch of water every day for a year and not see the same thing twice. How does one compound behave with such diversity?
This is a book about the physical clues, signs, and patterns to look for in water
Roger Deakin pointed out that giraffes are the only mammals that cannot swim and that we have webbing between our thumbs and forefingers, unlike other apes, adding to the powerful arguments in support of the popular theory that we are drawn to water biologically
Understanding the things we see and the reasons for them does not reduce the beauty of the whole—quite the opposite. As I discovered a few years ago, once you learn that you can measure the size of raindrops by looking at the colors in a rainbow—the more red, the bigger the drops� rainbows take on a new beauty and lose none.
Viking-blond Scandinavian
How do we know this much about a man of lowly background, from a distant part of the world, all those years ago? Because he did something that displayed extraordinary knowledge and chutzpah. Enough of each for his story to survive.
Without the use of charts, compass, or sextant, the Pacific Islanders found their way over great stretches of ocean, relying entirely on their interpretation of nature’s signposts
the talk of the sea, the water lore
there will be no coconut potions for me
I hope you enjoy the quest. Tristan
Look very closely at a glass of water and you will notice how the surface of the water in the glass is not flat; it curves up slightly at the edges. It has a “meniscus.� This meniscus curve is caused by the water being attracted to the glass. The attraction between the water and the glass turns what would otherwise be a flat surface into the gentlest of bowls with a tiny rim. by drawing a few pieces together it can become a stepping-stone to helping us understand why a river will flood.
only liquid metal, mercury, are repelled by glass, and this leads to an upside-down bowl shape or “convex meniscus.�
Liquids are also weakly attracted to themselves—if they were not they would separate and become gaseous. Water is attracted to water.
Water molecules, as our science teachers drummed into us, have two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, and these are bound together tightly. But the thing that the teachers—mine at least—don’t tell us is that hydrogen atoms in one water molecule are also attracted to the oxygen atoms in the other water molecules nearby.
Take a glass of water and pour a few drops onto a flat, smooth, waterproof surface, like a kitchen countertop. Instead of flattening entirely and running off, there is now a group of small upside-down puddles.
Pick two of the bigger pools that are reasonably close to each other. If you put your finger in one and draw it toward the other and let go, not much happens—the pool may stretch in size a little, but that’s all. Notice how it has a tendency to shrink back a little bit, as the water you have pulled with your finger gets gently yanked back by the attraction of the water it has left behind. (If you try this on different surfaces, you’ll notice how the amount and rate that the water shrinks back varies from one surface to the other, because it depends on how much each different surface attracts the water.) But now if you draw your finger further, all the way until the two pools just touch each other, watch what happens. The water that was being pulled back by its home pool no longer is. Instead it is now being pulled by its new friend—the pools join together as one, bonded by water’s stickiness.
After one of these experiments, when I came to clear up and pulled a cloth across the small pools, the water did something that it always does, but which I had never previously noticed. The cloth absorbs a lot of the water—that’s its job—but the remaining water is “ironed� out into a thin flat layer. But this layer only stays flat and thin for a second, before the water quite literally pulls itself together, forming hundreds of very small pools again.
L V was fascinated by water and carefully observed its “stickiness.� He liked to watch the way a small drop of water does not always instantly fall from the underside tree branches. Da Vinci noticed that when the drop is big enough to fall, it does so with some resistance. Around 1508 he noted the way that before a drop finally falls, it stretches until a neck of water is formed, and when that is too thin to support the weight of the drop, only then does it fall.
shortly after it stops raining, take a look at the leaf tips of a broad-leaved tree or shrub. The water collects and often runs down the thin rib at the center of the leaf, before gathering at the tip. The drop hangs there, the tension or stickiness of the water is now battling gravity, before enough water gathers, gravity prevails, and the drop falls. The leaf often bounces up elegantly at this point, and then the process begins again.
For this trick, by which I mean, serious experiment, we are going to prove that the water’s surface tension creates a skin that is strong enough to support a small metal weight. To do this we are going to watch a needle float on water. The only challenging part is the first bit, because we need to rest the needle on the water very, very slowly and carefully, otherwise the needle will break through the surface of the water and sink to the bottom. There is a sneaky way to do this: Rest the needle on a small piece of blotting paper (a little harder to find these days, but still in most stationers). The blotting paper will slowly become saturated and then sink to the bottom of the bowl of water, leaving the needle floating.
This proves that the surface tension of the water is strong enough to support a small piece of metal. Now we need to prove that it is the electric bond between the molecules that creates this skin. We can weaken the bonds between the water molecules by adding a little detergent to the water. Any dish soap will do—detergents work partly because they carry charges that nullify the electric attraction of the water. The needle sinks.
If you approach a large body of still water—a pond or lake—anywhere outdoors near summer, you are likely to find a busy world of insects. And by observing the insects you will see the water skin experiment at large.
Why don’t they fall in? We certainly would. It’s because the surface tension of the water is stronger than the effect of gravity on small insects. For big lumps, like humans, it is the other way around, but this does at least make swimming more enjoyable.
We’re all at least a bit familiar with the idea that liquids don’t always obey gravity. Every time we dip a paintbrush in water we watch the water flowing upward into the hairs, even though our understanding of gravity tells us that water shouldn’t flow upward in this way.
The reason for this capillary action is a simple combination of the two effects we have been looking at. Water is attracted to some surfaces, like glass and paintbrush fibers, and it is also attracted to itself. So when an opening is thin enough, something interesting happens: The meniscus effect means that the surface of the water is attracted to the material above it and is drawn upward, and since it is a narrow opening this pulls the whole surface of the liquid upward. Then, because the water is sticking to itself, the water just below the surface also gets pulled along and follows it upward. The narrower the opening, up to a point, the more dramatic the effect.
Every plant you see, from a tiny weed to a great oak, depends upon capillary action to get the water from the ground to its highest leaves. We know there are no pumps in trees and yet thousands of gallons—tons of water—have to get from the soil to the tops of tall trees somehow. Without capillary action this would be impossible.
Back in the kitchen, the reason that reusable cleaning wipes, tissues, and other finely woven materials are so good at mopping up water is that they have been specially designed to maximize capillary action.
The distance that water can travel upward is influenced by a number of factors, including its purity —clean water rises higher than polluted water—but the main one is the size of the gaps between the particles. Water rises much higher in soils with fine rounded particles, like silts, than in course soils, like sandy ones. At the extremes, water can rise very high in clay, but will hardly rise at all in gravel.
The air pressure will also affect the amount of water that rises up through the soil and is then held there in suspension. This means that when there is a sudden lowering of air pressure, as we get when storms are approaching, the soil is unable to hold onto as much of this capillary water and it drains out very quickly into the local streams, adding to the likelihood of flooding during the storm.
I taking a short detour at this point to demonstrate how noticing the smallest of things can combine with broader observations to give us a deeper insight into what is going on.
When the air pressure is low the sea will be higher than when the air pressure is high—a difference of about a foot—is typical from a big high to deep low pressure system. To help you remember this, think of a high pressure system and its lovely blue skies pressing down on the horizon, lowering the sea.
Imagine you’re in a coastal area you know well and you suddenly notice that the sea appears higher than you have ever noticed it before, even at high tide. That might lead you to suspect that the air pressure has dropped quite a lot. This in turn means that you can predict not just bad weather approaching, which is likely when the barometer drops, but also an increased risk of flooding, as some of the water being held by capillary action above all those streams, ditches, and rivers is about to be released, before the first raindrop has even fallen.
At various times these skills have been called magic and more recently, psychic—they are neither. They are the fruits of a little curiosity, awareness, and a willingness to join the dots.
Our brains are contending with so much information from our senses that they rely on a filter to cope. There is an automatic prioritizing system in the software of our heads and it constantly sifts the information that our eyes relay for things of urgent interest. In evolutionary terms, we would once have been most interested in predators and prey—threats and opportunities. And both predators and prey move, which is why we notice movement in any scene, before spotting more subtle clues.
It was straightforward for him to deduce that the archipelago must have been to his south and was shielding him from those waves. The water was calmer, Cook realized, because he was in a “swell shadow.� As soon as he felt these waves return, Cook was able to relax a little, knowing that he must have passed the area of danger. This was a “ripple shadow,� an area protected from the wind-driven ripples by the stepping-stone, and it reminded me of the swell shadow that Cook had sensed.
I suddenly appreciated that I was looking at a “ripple map�
Pg 31-32 diagram
Here it is worth introducing the idea that there is a difference between ripples, waves, and swell. All three are water waves created by the wind blowing over the water.
I imagined being one of the small, dry, broken leaves that were bouncing on the ripples. That bounce changed as the windblown leaf passed around the stone, and if I had been an ant on that rocky leaf, I would have had a chance to feel where I was relative to the stone island. This is the art that the Pacific navigators called meaify, the fine skill of navigating by reading the behavior of the water. The motion is sometimes easier to sense with your eyes closed, and some navigators have been known to lie on the deck with their eyes shut.
We know more about the way some Pacific Islanders read the patterns in the water than much of the rest of their culture, thanks to the curiosity of Captain Winkler of the German Navy in the 1890s. Aided by his interpreter, Joachim de Brum
In a nautical world, one where life depended on traveling by sea and finding islands, but one without compasses, charts, or sextants, the conditions were perfectly set for a rich and sophisticated culture of water-reading to blossom.
These are fine skills and, in truth, hard for any of us to develop to the levels of the Pacific Islanders without giving up much of our lives to that pursuit.
When waves run over each other like this and create a new pattern, scientists call it “wave interference.� Where two crests coincide, the water becomes double the height it was before, and where two troughs coincide a doubly deep trough is created, but where a crest from one set of ripples or waves meets the trough from another, they cancel each other out.
Pacific Navigators do not aim precisely for their destination island; instead, they head as best they can toward the area of ocean that they know the island is in. Once the navigator judges—from the length of passage and other signs like the position of the stars—that the island cannot be too far away, he begins to scour the sea and sky for the clues that help to make invisible land appear. As well as the swell patterns we looked at earlier, one of the main clues was the species of birds that could be seen
Terns, boobies, and frigate birds each have their own comfortable range from land, and so a flock of any of these formed part of the navigator’s radar. Frigates might roam as much as seventy miles from land, whereas terns were a very welcome sight, as they were rarely seen more than twenty miles. In the Pacific, this technique has earned its own name: etakidimaan.
The sea life also changed noticeably as land drew nearer, as fish, dolphins, and jellyfish, just like all other animals, have preferred habitats that will be strongly influenced by the shallowing of the sea nearer land. But there were other signs, too, including the way the clouds behaved differently above the warm air rising over land than they did above the cooler water.
Common flies are rarely seen as better than a nuisance, but on a hot summer’s day try to notice how their numbers fluctuate as you travel past water sources. In the Sahara I found them to be a treasured clue and one of the most dependable signs that an oasis was nearby.
Beech trees have evolved to tolerate much lower levels of water in the ground than most other temperate trees and indeed have roots that will not tolerate long periods of being immersed in water, which gives them a huge advantage in places where water is in relatively short supply—beeches are therefore a good sign you are on dry ground. Willows and alders will only grow well in places where their roots will be regularly wet, and so they are a strong indicator that water is not far away.
Every single one of the lower plants, from the uglier weeds to the most beguiling wildflowers, will have its preferred level of moisture and so reveal the water in the ground and therefore the likelihood of it nearby.
Rain churns up plant oils into the atmosphere and activates the actinomycetes bacteria in the soil, and this is part of that unique smell of rain on dry ground we come to know so well. If rain falls after a long dry spell, it generates a particularly strong scent known as “petrichor.�
if a puddle is persistent, then the first thing we can deduce is that the ground beneath the puddle is either not porous or it is saturated.
Roads are designed with a camber so that the water flows from the center to the edge of the road, precisely to avoid puddles in the middle of the road.
Whenever roads are dug up, for repairs or to lay cables, the road is sealed over, but nearly always with a material that is different from the one originally used to build the road. Over time this will swell and contract at a rate different from the rest of the road, and it is very common to find a puddle at the join of the old tarmac to the new.
Pg 55 image
Do the tracks pass alongside the puddle or do they point in toward it? It is very straightforward from there to work out whether the animal was having a drink or just passing by, trying not to get its paws wet. And now spend a moment looking to see if you can decipher where the animal came from and headed to afterward. Did it follow the path you are on—very likely if it is a dog—or cut through undergrowth to the side somewhere nearby—more likely if it is a wild animal?
A a hundred years ago, A. M. Worthington, headmaster and professor of physics at the Royal Naval Engineering College in Devonport, in South West England, took advantage of the new technology of highspeed photography to investigate what a splash is, how it forms, and what it actually looks like. He wrote up his results in a book published in 1908, called, appropriately, A Study of Splashes.
A good sign that you are looking at an Overhang puddle is a strip of moss indicating the flow of water from a tree or part of a building down to that spot in the ground, as moss is a guarantee that an area is regularly wet
rain rarely falls perfectly vertically and, outside of the tropics, the sun is never overhead. The heaviest rainfalls are usually accompanied by strong winds, which means that water will be driven by the wind and hit buildings, trees, and hillsides at an angle.
The Seismometer puddle is the puddle we can use to measure the slightest movements in the ground or air. Navajo Indians were reputed to be able to discern whether horses were approaching, even the number of horses, their speed, distance, and whether they had riders on, just by placing their ears to the ground. The principle behind a Seismometer puddle is very similar. By tuning to fine vibrations in the ground, we can learn to predict things that the urban natives around us fail to spot. Like whether our bus is on its way or if the train has just passed under us.
You are probably aware that competitive rifle marksmen give as much thought to their breathing as to their rifle. The reason for both of these, is that the further something is away, the greater the effect a small angle change will have on what you see.
Coming back to the puddle on the pavement, if we look at our own reflection, it would take quite a major disturbance, a foot stomping in it or a strong gust of wind, to have much impact on that image in the puddle. But if we look at something very distant in the reflection, we will pick up much more subtle angle changes, which means that much tinier movements in the water’s surface become apparent.
THERE WAS AN ATTEMPT in the 1920s to classify river stages according to the fish that lived there, but it was only partially successful. From the fishless highest mountain streams, down through brown trout becks and on to minnows and then narrower fish like sunfish and bluegill. It works in a loose sense, as fish have their habitats, but unlike plants the fish refuse to stay put! Depending on whether the expert you talk to is a hydrologist, geologist, angler, or entomologist, they will choose to define river stages in their own different ways and from a very long list, which can quickly become confusing and unhelpful. Even mathematicians have their ways of labeling river stages and behaviors and have developed a formula, called Manning’s Formula, that supposedly takes everything into account and describes the velocity of the river, clarifying very little for us in the process. Fortunately we are going to simplify things by deciding that a river is either in its upland stage or its lowland stage.
if the water moves rapidly at times and carves narrow, sometimes steep channels, then it is an upland river. If it is broader, slow, and forms wide meanders, then it is a lowland river.
as the speed of water goes up by a factor of 2, the size of object it can carry goes up by 64.
Pg 93 pillow diagram
This is a book about the physical clues, signs, and patterns to look for in water
Roger Deakin pointed out that giraffes are the only mammals that cannot swim and that we have webbing between our thumbs and forefingers, unlike other apes, adding to the powerful arguments in support of the popular theory that we are drawn to water biologically
Understanding the things we see and the reasons for them does not reduce the beauty of the whole—quite the opposite. As I discovered a few years ago, once you learn that you can measure the size of raindrops by looking at the colors in a rainbow—the more red, the bigger the drops� rainbows take on a new beauty and lose none.
Viking-blond Scandinavian
How do we know this much about a man of lowly background, from a distant part of the world, all those years ago? Because he did something that displayed extraordinary knowledge and chutzpah. Enough of each for his story to survive.
Without the use of charts, compass, or sextant, the Pacific Islanders found their way over great stretches of ocean, relying entirely on their interpretation of nature’s signposts
the talk of the sea, the water lore
there will be no coconut potions for me
I hope you enjoy the quest. Tristan
Look very closely at a glass of water and you will notice how the surface of the water in the glass is not flat; it curves up slightly at the edges. It has a “meniscus.� This meniscus curve is caused by the water being attracted to the glass. The attraction between the water and the glass turns what would otherwise be a flat surface into the gentlest of bowls with a tiny rim. by drawing a few pieces together it can become a stepping-stone to helping us understand why a river will flood.
only liquid metal, mercury, are repelled by glass, and this leads to an upside-down bowl shape or “convex meniscus.�
Liquids are also weakly attracted to themselves—if they were not they would separate and become gaseous. Water is attracted to water.
Water molecules, as our science teachers drummed into us, have two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, and these are bound together tightly. But the thing that the teachers—mine at least—don’t tell us is that hydrogen atoms in one water molecule are also attracted to the oxygen atoms in the other water molecules nearby.
Take a glass of water and pour a few drops onto a flat, smooth, waterproof surface, like a kitchen countertop. Instead of flattening entirely and running off, there is now a group of small upside-down puddles.
Pick two of the bigger pools that are reasonably close to each other. If you put your finger in one and draw it toward the other and let go, not much happens—the pool may stretch in size a little, but that’s all. Notice how it has a tendency to shrink back a little bit, as the water you have pulled with your finger gets gently yanked back by the attraction of the water it has left behind. (If you try this on different surfaces, you’ll notice how the amount and rate that the water shrinks back varies from one surface to the other, because it depends on how much each different surface attracts the water.) But now if you draw your finger further, all the way until the two pools just touch each other, watch what happens. The water that was being pulled back by its home pool no longer is. Instead it is now being pulled by its new friend—the pools join together as one, bonded by water’s stickiness.
After one of these experiments, when I came to clear up and pulled a cloth across the small pools, the water did something that it always does, but which I had never previously noticed. The cloth absorbs a lot of the water—that’s its job—but the remaining water is “ironed� out into a thin flat layer. But this layer only stays flat and thin for a second, before the water quite literally pulls itself together, forming hundreds of very small pools again.
L V was fascinated by water and carefully observed its “stickiness.� He liked to watch the way a small drop of water does not always instantly fall from the underside tree branches. Da Vinci noticed that when the drop is big enough to fall, it does so with some resistance. Around 1508 he noted the way that before a drop finally falls, it stretches until a neck of water is formed, and when that is too thin to support the weight of the drop, only then does it fall.
shortly after it stops raining, take a look at the leaf tips of a broad-leaved tree or shrub. The water collects and often runs down the thin rib at the center of the leaf, before gathering at the tip. The drop hangs there, the tension or stickiness of the water is now battling gravity, before enough water gathers, gravity prevails, and the drop falls. The leaf often bounces up elegantly at this point, and then the process begins again.
For this trick, by which I mean, serious experiment, we are going to prove that the water’s surface tension creates a skin that is strong enough to support a small metal weight. To do this we are going to watch a needle float on water. The only challenging part is the first bit, because we need to rest the needle on the water very, very slowly and carefully, otherwise the needle will break through the surface of the water and sink to the bottom. There is a sneaky way to do this: Rest the needle on a small piece of blotting paper (a little harder to find these days, but still in most stationers). The blotting paper will slowly become saturated and then sink to the bottom of the bowl of water, leaving the needle floating.
This proves that the surface tension of the water is strong enough to support a small piece of metal. Now we need to prove that it is the electric bond between the molecules that creates this skin. We can weaken the bonds between the water molecules by adding a little detergent to the water. Any dish soap will do—detergents work partly because they carry charges that nullify the electric attraction of the water. The needle sinks.
If you approach a large body of still water—a pond or lake—anywhere outdoors near summer, you are likely to find a busy world of insects. And by observing the insects you will see the water skin experiment at large.
Why don’t they fall in? We certainly would. It’s because the surface tension of the water is stronger than the effect of gravity on small insects. For big lumps, like humans, it is the other way around, but this does at least make swimming more enjoyable.
We’re all at least a bit familiar with the idea that liquids don’t always obey gravity. Every time we dip a paintbrush in water we watch the water flowing upward into the hairs, even though our understanding of gravity tells us that water shouldn’t flow upward in this way.
The reason for this capillary action is a simple combination of the two effects we have been looking at. Water is attracted to some surfaces, like glass and paintbrush fibers, and it is also attracted to itself. So when an opening is thin enough, something interesting happens: The meniscus effect means that the surface of the water is attracted to the material above it and is drawn upward, and since it is a narrow opening this pulls the whole surface of the liquid upward. Then, because the water is sticking to itself, the water just below the surface also gets pulled along and follows it upward. The narrower the opening, up to a point, the more dramatic the effect.
Every plant you see, from a tiny weed to a great oak, depends upon capillary action to get the water from the ground to its highest leaves. We know there are no pumps in trees and yet thousands of gallons—tons of water—have to get from the soil to the tops of tall trees somehow. Without capillary action this would be impossible.
Back in the kitchen, the reason that reusable cleaning wipes, tissues, and other finely woven materials are so good at mopping up water is that they have been specially designed to maximize capillary action.
The distance that water can travel upward is influenced by a number of factors, including its purity —clean water rises higher than polluted water—but the main one is the size of the gaps between the particles. Water rises much higher in soils with fine rounded particles, like silts, than in course soils, like sandy ones. At the extremes, water can rise very high in clay, but will hardly rise at all in gravel.
The air pressure will also affect the amount of water that rises up through the soil and is then held there in suspension. This means that when there is a sudden lowering of air pressure, as we get when storms are approaching, the soil is unable to hold onto as much of this capillary water and it drains out very quickly into the local streams, adding to the likelihood of flooding during the storm.
I taking a short detour at this point to demonstrate how noticing the smallest of things can combine with broader observations to give us a deeper insight into what is going on.
When the air pressure is low the sea will be higher than when the air pressure is high—a difference of about a foot—is typical from a big high to deep low pressure system. To help you remember this, think of a high pressure system and its lovely blue skies pressing down on the horizon, lowering the sea.
Imagine you’re in a coastal area you know well and you suddenly notice that the sea appears higher than you have ever noticed it before, even at high tide. That might lead you to suspect that the air pressure has dropped quite a lot. This in turn means that you can predict not just bad weather approaching, which is likely when the barometer drops, but also an increased risk of flooding, as some of the water being held by capillary action above all those streams, ditches, and rivers is about to be released, before the first raindrop has even fallen.
At various times these skills have been called magic and more recently, psychic—they are neither. They are the fruits of a little curiosity, awareness, and a willingness to join the dots.
Our brains are contending with so much information from our senses that they rely on a filter to cope. There is an automatic prioritizing system in the software of our heads and it constantly sifts the information that our eyes relay for things of urgent interest. In evolutionary terms, we would once have been most interested in predators and prey—threats and opportunities. And both predators and prey move, which is why we notice movement in any scene, before spotting more subtle clues.
It was straightforward for him to deduce that the archipelago must have been to his south and was shielding him from those waves. The water was calmer, Cook realized, because he was in a “swell shadow.� As soon as he felt these waves return, Cook was able to relax a little, knowing that he must have passed the area of danger. This was a “ripple shadow,� an area protected from the wind-driven ripples by the stepping-stone, and it reminded me of the swell shadow that Cook had sensed.
I suddenly appreciated that I was looking at a “ripple map�
Pg 31-32 diagram
Here it is worth introducing the idea that there is a difference between ripples, waves, and swell. All three are water waves created by the wind blowing over the water.
I imagined being one of the small, dry, broken leaves that were bouncing on the ripples. That bounce changed as the windblown leaf passed around the stone, and if I had been an ant on that rocky leaf, I would have had a chance to feel where I was relative to the stone island. This is the art that the Pacific navigators called meaify, the fine skill of navigating by reading the behavior of the water. The motion is sometimes easier to sense with your eyes closed, and some navigators have been known to lie on the deck with their eyes shut.
We know more about the way some Pacific Islanders read the patterns in the water than much of the rest of their culture, thanks to the curiosity of Captain Winkler of the German Navy in the 1890s. Aided by his interpreter, Joachim de Brum
In a nautical world, one where life depended on traveling by sea and finding islands, but one without compasses, charts, or sextants, the conditions were perfectly set for a rich and sophisticated culture of water-reading to blossom.
These are fine skills and, in truth, hard for any of us to develop to the levels of the Pacific Islanders without giving up much of our lives to that pursuit.
When waves run over each other like this and create a new pattern, scientists call it “wave interference.� Where two crests coincide, the water becomes double the height it was before, and where two troughs coincide a doubly deep trough is created, but where a crest from one set of ripples or waves meets the trough from another, they cancel each other out.
Pacific Navigators do not aim precisely for their destination island; instead, they head as best they can toward the area of ocean that they know the island is in. Once the navigator judges—from the length of passage and other signs like the position of the stars—that the island cannot be too far away, he begins to scour the sea and sky for the clues that help to make invisible land appear. As well as the swell patterns we looked at earlier, one of the main clues was the species of birds that could be seen
Terns, boobies, and frigate birds each have their own comfortable range from land, and so a flock of any of these formed part of the navigator’s radar. Frigates might roam as much as seventy miles from land, whereas terns were a very welcome sight, as they were rarely seen more than twenty miles. In the Pacific, this technique has earned its own name: etakidimaan.
The sea life also changed noticeably as land drew nearer, as fish, dolphins, and jellyfish, just like all other animals, have preferred habitats that will be strongly influenced by the shallowing of the sea nearer land. But there were other signs, too, including the way the clouds behaved differently above the warm air rising over land than they did above the cooler water.
Common flies are rarely seen as better than a nuisance, but on a hot summer’s day try to notice how their numbers fluctuate as you travel past water sources. In the Sahara I found them to be a treasured clue and one of the most dependable signs that an oasis was nearby.
Beech trees have evolved to tolerate much lower levels of water in the ground than most other temperate trees and indeed have roots that will not tolerate long periods of being immersed in water, which gives them a huge advantage in places where water is in relatively short supply—beeches are therefore a good sign you are on dry ground. Willows and alders will only grow well in places where their roots will be regularly wet, and so they are a strong indicator that water is not far away.
Every single one of the lower plants, from the uglier weeds to the most beguiling wildflowers, will have its preferred level of moisture and so reveal the water in the ground and therefore the likelihood of it nearby.
Rain churns up plant oils into the atmosphere and activates the actinomycetes bacteria in the soil, and this is part of that unique smell of rain on dry ground we come to know so well. If rain falls after a long dry spell, it generates a particularly strong scent known as “petrichor.�
if a puddle is persistent, then the first thing we can deduce is that the ground beneath the puddle is either not porous or it is saturated.
Roads are designed with a camber so that the water flows from the center to the edge of the road, precisely to avoid puddles in the middle of the road.
Whenever roads are dug up, for repairs or to lay cables, the road is sealed over, but nearly always with a material that is different from the one originally used to build the road. Over time this will swell and contract at a rate different from the rest of the road, and it is very common to find a puddle at the join of the old tarmac to the new.
Pg 55 image
Do the tracks pass alongside the puddle or do they point in toward it? It is very straightforward from there to work out whether the animal was having a drink or just passing by, trying not to get its paws wet. And now spend a moment looking to see if you can decipher where the animal came from and headed to afterward. Did it follow the path you are on—very likely if it is a dog—or cut through undergrowth to the side somewhere nearby—more likely if it is a wild animal?
A a hundred years ago, A. M. Worthington, headmaster and professor of physics at the Royal Naval Engineering College in Devonport, in South West England, took advantage of the new technology of highspeed photography to investigate what a splash is, how it forms, and what it actually looks like. He wrote up his results in a book published in 1908, called, appropriately, A Study of Splashes.
A good sign that you are looking at an Overhang puddle is a strip of moss indicating the flow of water from a tree or part of a building down to that spot in the ground, as moss is a guarantee that an area is regularly wet
rain rarely falls perfectly vertically and, outside of the tropics, the sun is never overhead. The heaviest rainfalls are usually accompanied by strong winds, which means that water will be driven by the wind and hit buildings, trees, and hillsides at an angle.
The Seismometer puddle is the puddle we can use to measure the slightest movements in the ground or air. Navajo Indians were reputed to be able to discern whether horses were approaching, even the number of horses, their speed, distance, and whether they had riders on, just by placing their ears to the ground. The principle behind a Seismometer puddle is very similar. By tuning to fine vibrations in the ground, we can learn to predict things that the urban natives around us fail to spot. Like whether our bus is on its way or if the train has just passed under us.
You are probably aware that competitive rifle marksmen give as much thought to their breathing as to their rifle. The reason for both of these, is that the further something is away, the greater the effect a small angle change will have on what you see.
Coming back to the puddle on the pavement, if we look at our own reflection, it would take quite a major disturbance, a foot stomping in it or a strong gust of wind, to have much impact on that image in the puddle. But if we look at something very distant in the reflection, we will pick up much more subtle angle changes, which means that much tinier movements in the water’s surface become apparent.
THERE WAS AN ATTEMPT in the 1920s to classify river stages according to the fish that lived there, but it was only partially successful. From the fishless highest mountain streams, down through brown trout becks and on to minnows and then narrower fish like sunfish and bluegill. It works in a loose sense, as fish have their habitats, but unlike plants the fish refuse to stay put! Depending on whether the expert you talk to is a hydrologist, geologist, angler, or entomologist, they will choose to define river stages in their own different ways and from a very long list, which can quickly become confusing and unhelpful. Even mathematicians have their ways of labeling river stages and behaviors and have developed a formula, called Manning’s Formula, that supposedly takes everything into account and describes the velocity of the river, clarifying very little for us in the process. Fortunately we are going to simplify things by deciding that a river is either in its upland stage or its lowland stage.
if the water moves rapidly at times and carves narrow, sometimes steep channels, then it is an upland river. If it is broader, slow, and forms wide meanders, then it is a lowland river.
as the speed of water goes up by a factor of 2, the size of object it can carry goes up by 64.
Pg 93 pillow diagram
Read
April 6, 2016Natural navigator Gooley is far more hands-on than much of the movement aiming to reconnect alienated modern Britons with the landscape around us. True, we expect the writers to have roughed it themselves a bit, but if you try climbing your first mountain with a Rob Macfarlane book your only guide, you'll likely come a cropper. Gooley, on the other hand, may not be a writer on quite the same exalted level (the overall experience is not dissimilar to taking a guided nature walk, complete with a bubbling undercurrent of terrible dad jokes), but he's certainly engaging, and as a practical resource this book has a lot going for it. I'm not saying you could locate yourself in the open ocean using this volume alone - but after reading it you will probably find yourself a little less lost some of the time than you would have been otherwise. NB - if you are planning to do anything bold with this information, do try to get a finished copy, because review copies like mine are missing all the helpful illustrations and diagrams.
November 14, 2019
What kinds of landscape features indicate water is nearby? How can the sight of birds far out at sea reveal both the direction and distance to shore? Why are puddles more likely to form on the south side of a road? In this surprisingly engaging guidebook, Tristan Gooley inspires the reader to pay greater attention to the nature and behavior of water in order to better understand what is happening both above and below. I picked up a number of things I know I'll be able to apply to my own outdoor wanderings.
Want to read
March 22, 2017NetGalley just rejected me for the second time :(
May 28, 2017
An eclectic work that combines science, anthropology, geography and folk lore to relate a very different way of looking at the natural world through the 'lens' of water.
April 24, 2020
This was delightful, and magical insofar as it returned me to childhood, reminding me of the ways in which, as a child, I observed things around me with far more clarity and in sharper detail than I do now. And questioned them. Patterns in water and in sand and seaweed. Over and over again some observation would be made which I recognised as having made myself when young but had forgotten about, and explanation given.
I doubt I'll remember all I'd like to when next visiting the coast, walking alongside a river, but at least I'll be looking harder in the effort.
I doubt I'll remember all I'd like to when next visiting the coast, walking alongside a river, but at least I'll be looking harder in the effort.
Read
May 31, 2020I found this a bit of a hard read at first, but once I got going it was interesting and drew me onwards.
It is informative, and humorous at times, and made me wish I live near the sea or open water to observe the phenomena described and really well explained. I borrowed this from the library and now have a copy to take when, if I ever, in this lockdown, I find time to spend by the waters, the sea in particular.
It is informative, and humorous at times, and made me wish I live near the sea or open water to observe the phenomena described and really well explained. I borrowed this from the library and now have a copy to take when, if I ever, in this lockdown, I find time to spend by the waters, the sea in particular.
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