natural navigation Quotes

How can a man learn navigation Where there's no rudder?

To the lost man, to the pioneer penetrating a new country, to the naturalist who wishes to see the wild land at its wildest, the advice is always the same - follow a river. The river is the original forest highway. It is nature's own Wilderness Road.

In the days before automobiles, people in horse-drawn wagons used to sleep if they were tired. They didn't worry about getting lost, because the horse knew the way home. Your heart knows the way to your gifts. You can trust it to take you to them.

How do geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a voice within if only we would listen to it, that tells us certainly when to go forth into the unknown.

...as the day wore on I watched the birds all flying in one direction, and said, Land lies there.

The Sun, Moon and Stars are there to guide us.

If you depend on where the chestnuts are going to be, and where the deer are, you have to be attuned to the outside world.

We go to sea repeatedly from Melville's time on - and the image of men at sea, like the image of men in the wilderness, seems to me to be almost an archetypal image of human beings on their own, human beings making their own way, guiding themselves by the stars they can see - rather than by faith or prayer or invisible forces.

Look for where the sky is brightest along the horizon. That reflects the nearest river. Strike out for a river and you will find habitation.