Cover of Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass

Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass

During his remarkable lifetime, Harold Gatty became one of the world's great navigators (in 1931, he and Wiley Post flew around the world in a record-breaking eight days) and, to the benefit of posterity, recorded in this book much of his accumulated knowledge about pathfinding both on land and at sea.

Applying methods used by primitive peoples and early explorers, the author shows how to determine location, study wind directions and reflections in the sky, even how to use the senses of smell and hearing to find your way in the wilderness, in a desert, in snow-covered areas, and on the ocean. By observing birds and other animals, weather patterns, vegetation, shifting sands, patterns of snow fields, and the positions of the sun, moon, and stars, would-be explorers can learn to estimate distances and find their way without having to rely on a map or a compass.

Read more

The wealth of valuable data and advice in this volume — much of it unavailable elsewhere — makes it indispensable for hikers, bikers, scouts, sailors, and outdoorsmen — all those who might find themselves stranded or lost in an unfamiliar area. Through careful study of this book and its lessons, pathfinders can learn to interpret signs in the natural world to find their way in almost any kind of terrain.

Subject
biographytravelscience
Genre
adventure
Themes
naturesurvival
Audience
adult
Length
medium · 288 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. How to Stay Alive in the Woods: A Complete Guide to Food, Shelter and Self-Preservation Anywhere Shares survival, non, nonfiction
  2. The Total Outdoorsman Manual Shares non, hist bio, outdoors
  3. Camping and Woodcraft: A Handbook for Vacation Campers and for Travelers in the Wilderness Shares non, hist bio, outdoors
  4. Food for Free Shares nonfiction, nature, outdoors

“People who read Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Shelters, Shacks & Shanties: And How to Build Them
  2. Houseboat on the Seine: A Memoir
  3. Stalking the Wild Asparagus
  4. The Solar House: Passive Solar Heating and Cooling

“If you want more of the same (biography about nature), start with these.”

  1. Wilderness Navigation: Finding Your Way Using Map, Compass, Altimeter, & GPS
  2. Camping & Wilderness Survival, 2nd: The Ultimate Outdoors Book
  3. Wild: Stories of Survival from the World's Most Dangerous Places
  4. The Backpacker's Handbook, 4th Edition

“If it was the non that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. The Outdoor Survival Handbook: A Guide To The Resources & Material Available In The Wild & How To Use Them For Food, Shelter, Warmth, & Navigation
  2. Tom Brown's Field Guide to Wilderness Survival
  3. Essential Bushcraft
  4. Survival Wisdom & Know How: Everything You Need to Know to Thrive in the Wilderness

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. How To Read Water: Clues, Signs & Patterns from Puddles to the Sea
  2. Eric Sloane's Weather Book
  3. The Octonauts and the Sea of Shade
  4. Cook