Reviews for Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass

The average rating for Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-03-05 00:00:00 Cusrtis Huill It's my own damn fault that I was so disappointed by this book. I had unrealistic expectations. I dreamed this book would make me a master adventurer overnight. Something like a combo of the Boy Scout Handbook and The Dangerous Book for Boys, except written for adults. Instead, I got the most tedious version of the book's premise imaginable. To be sure, there are a few insightful sections that really caught my attention: finding directions based on the stars; sea navigation based on the color of the ocean and the direction of the swells; his general tips for estimating distance. I'm also a big fan of the general philosophy behind the book. That is, be a Sherlock-level observer of nature, and you can reasonably find your way out of (or into) trouble. But too often the book fell into tedious fact listing or comically absurd tips. Most of his "tips" were either dated (even though the publishing date says 1998, it reads more like the 1950s), ridiculous in execution ("here, memorize this crap-load of tables, charts, and bird species, and you'll be well on your way!"), common sense ("if you're noticing roads, you're probably getting closer to civilization!"), or confounded by so many variables that they give very little direction. I get the general ideas behind finding your way by anthills or wind direction, but he clearly explains you need some form of hyperlocal knowledge for them to be effective. This seems to render any tips useless. You'd have to know where you are anyway to accurately know which way the prevailing wind should be blowing from. Only my drive to completely finish books got me through some of the agonizingly boring sections. Never have I wanted to kill every single bird in existence more than when I read the section detailing every sea bird. I've never felt more disfigured than when he (incorrectly) believes people walk in circles because one leg is shorter than the other. Look, it's a great reference book, but he's a poor writer and 3 out of 5 tips are useless to me. I just wish this book could have been the book I hyped it up to be. It's fine, but I'd recommend other books for someone looking into navigation and wayfinding (or adventuring!).

Review # 2 was written on 2014-02-13 00:00:00 Rick Andersen It does what the title says, as written by a navigator and aviation pioneer. It's more of a compendium of tips for divining direction through observation of wind direction, snow melt, anthill orientation (!), and other oddities only absorbed through years of action. It's a plea for mindfulness of one's environment, which I need to remember as a viable alternative to stuffing earbuds in my head during a walk or run. Plenty of his advice is outdated ("[during a transcontinental flight] I found that it was much easier to tell the wind direction on Mondays than on any other day by watching the clotheslines, for Monday is wash day the world over") but the principle holds eternal: Look around you and you'll learn to orient yourself in space. Not all of us can be Darwins, but all of us can be constructive potterers, all of us can go for walks with no purpose in view but that of watching, of observation, of developing the use of the senses we are born with, of arousing thought and stimulating the imagination, of awakening the creative faculties. Everything becomes more meaningful to him who watches and listens without too much thought to the value of his time.