Hello, and welcome to Live like the world is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host today in Minerowyn and I have here with me my other lovely host, James. How are you doing, James?
I am in. I'm great. Living the dream over here.
Hell, yeah. And we are here to talk about something that we have tried so many times to talk about, and we've been thwarted by technology multiple times. And so we are back for attempt number three at navigating our way through the utterly tangled wilderness of map and compass navigation. And I'm excited for it to be done.
Yeah. Yeah, me too. We're recording this one on two tin cans and a string because it's the most reliable technology available to us.
Exactly. Oh, I missed an opportunity. I should have said to get to the other side of it. That would have been more thematically appropriate. But before we get to the other side of it, we are a proud member of the channel Zero network of anarchist podcasts, where you can listen to other really cool podcasts and maybe. And where you will not be sold strange products that you never want to use, ever. Because we're an entirely listener supported podcast and because we don't do weird things like that on the network. Although I do need a new security system. Could you recommend one, James? Maybe Simplisafe?
Yeah, definitely. Or have you considered like, a large dog and maybe like a pump action shotgun?
Oh, okay. Yeah, that sounds like a better. Oh, wait, no. There's this cool bird that I heard about that will just make a noise whenever it sees something strange.
Perfect. Yeah, it's called the simply safe bird.
The Simply safe bird.
Tin can on a string.
That's what the bird sound sounds like.
Oh, wow. Okay. Unique. I know the kind of pain you're feeling, Alex. I once had it myself.
You some kind of doctor?
No, Alex, I am Magneto, and I have come to offer you, you, sanctuary.
Hello.
This is our jingle for our podcast, the Grounded Futures show. This is the show where we discuss.
Topics ranging from climate change to identity, to how youth can gain new skills to thrive amid current and ongoing disasters that we are collectively facing. We are your hosts, one Gen Z, Liam, and one Gen X, Carla. And we think we all deserve to thrive now and not in some distant utopian future. Yeah, but that's in the future. Oh, I hate the future.
Yeah, we're with Bolin. Grounded Futures is a larger project, so.
Check that out over@grounded futures.com. And we're back. So, James, I have here with me my Outdoor navigation kit. It's really only one thing, though. It's just I have a big Rambo knife that has a hollow handle and there's a compass embedded in the hilt. Okay, so am I good to get out there and start navigating?
Absolutely, yeah. That's pretty much how we suggest you go about it, actually. It's important that every navigational item you have be attached to a blade.
Yeah.
In such a way that you will be able to find your way back to where you left from, because you will inevitably be bleeding when you attempt to use a navigation item. And that gives a very nice blood trail.
Incredible. I mean, it works for. In Lord of the Rings. You know, they have those swords and they glow blue whenever they're near Oryx. It's a little strange, but I guess that's not really navigation, though. I imagine they could, like, wave them around and be like, are there orcs this way or are there less orcs this way?
Slap it against, Give it to a bird, have the bird fly around, see if it starts glowing and then just follow this. Follow. Yeah, that's one option. There are, however, other navigational tools available if you wish.
Cool.
I would like to talk today about navigating with a map and a compass. Compass ideally isn't attached to a large metal object, specifically a sharp large metal object. The reason. I think maybe we should talk about this in terms of like, the why before the how. That would be good.
Totally, yeah. Why might we want to use a map Encompass? Because I have a supercomputer in my pocket right now that will tell me anything I ask it.
Yeah. And that supercomputer, of course, is well known for being incredibly secure, being a great guardian of your data, which it doesn't share with anyone, and they last a very long time because they are all solar powered. And so. Okay, none of those things are true. For those of you who have never seen a smartphone battery lasts about a day. The reason smartphones are the way they are is to sell your data to people. Perhaps you don't want that. Or perhaps you just want to go on a walk and not take your phone. Or perhaps you have decided that your phone doesn't work. Perhaps we're in a. In a time or a place where telephones don't work. I have been to plenty of places, even in the continental US where I can't pull up the mapping software of choice. Right. Gaia, Cal, Topo, Onx, Google Maps. There are many others, I'm sure, because I don't have signal and I haven't downloaded the map because I didn't expect to be there or didn't prepare to need to navigate through there. You may want to go to a place that is not mapped or that does not have trails. Right. And lots of the principles of navigating with map and compass apply whether or not there are trails. Right. We may do things slightly differently.
Cool. Wait, do they also apply if you don't have a map? We'll get to that later. Yeah.
And they do. Yes. Or a compass. They say they also apply if you don't have a compass. There's normal navigation. Right. What we do every day, which is how do I get to my friend's house? How do I get there if I don't want to ride my bike down this road, which sucks. If I don't want to sit in traffic in my car? How do I get there if I don't want to pay the toll? That is the stuff that a lot of people use their telephone for. Right. And then there's not. So normal navigation. This is maybe when we decide we don't want to take our telephone or our telephone doesn't work or we're going somewhere and our telephone is unable to get the download. The base map.
Yeah. Or the base map. I guess Google has probably mapped the whole planet by this point. But it's like let's assume maybe a base map doesn't exist or it's inaccurate or like.
Yeah. When I was in the Darien Gap, there were not accurate base maps. I actually attempted to find topo maps that I could navigate with and it couldn't find very good ones.
Dang. Yeah, I guess I would also. It's like the. I feel like. So last time we did an episode about navigation, we really focused on trails and stuff like that. And it's like sometimes I feel like there's a lot of occasions I can think of where like you. There is no trail there. Like I'm sure there's like maybe you can find animal paths and things like that. And that's an age old trick. And getting lost or not getting lost sometimes. But it's like sometimes there just aren't trails for where we want to go because we're like, I'm like, I don't know, I'm in this random place and I'm trying to get to this other random place in this rousing game of Capture the Flag, you know?
Yeah. Maybe in the Capture the flag game we, we don't want to go along the trail. Right. Because people might be waiting for us there to stop us capturing the flag. So we may choose to avoid trails, or there may simply not be trails where we are going. And so to navigate either without trails or without a telephone or both, we first of all need to have some sense of direction. Right? That is the thing that will help us orient ourselves to the world and then orient our map to the world. And we do that chiefly using a compass. So we'll talk about compasses, I guess, and then we'll. We'll talk about maps next. I think you. You can navigate with. With either one and not the other, but ideally you would have both. Right? That. That would. That would make your life a lot easier. The magnetic compasses point towards the magnetic north. Right. Most of my navigation experience is in the northern hemisphere, so some of this stuff will be different in the southern hemisphere. But to a general degree, magnetic compasses point north. Right? That is because there is something. I'm not a physics understander, somewhere in the Earth, there is something magnetic, and then compasses point towards it. It's probably a ball of hot, melted metal. It lives north of me, and so my compass points towards it. Generally, our compasses will point to magnetic north. Right. This is not quite the same as true north, so sometimes we will have to correct for that. There are various ways to do that, but I think that's more. If you're learning about navigation and compasses for the first time on this podcast, that is a secondary concern for you. Right. Let's just assume that the compass points north. When you get a nice compass, you'll be able to adjust what's called the declination to allow you to correct for that difference. There's normally, like, a little tool, at least. I like silver compasses. There's a little tool in the lanyard that lets you adjust the compass to make it line up like that.
Nice.
Yeah. Their heart compasses are very simple tools. Right. It's a floating needle that points towards magnetic north. But this is immensely valuable, right? Because now we have a fixed direction, and we can use that to. We don't just have to go north. Right. The needle does not point at the direction you're going. I know that sounds funny, but I've taken people out for the first time and just watched them head off in a northerly direction, like, where are you going?
And they're like, I'm following the compass.
Yeah, Right. The needle, right. It is like, just points to the way you want to go. If you've only ever navigated on a phone, the arrow Points where you want to go. Right. So we can understand it.
This is Jack Sparrow's magic compass.
Yeah. This one.
Yeah.
There's a shining star over where you want to go and you just follow the rainbow to get there, etc. Etc. The compass has to do that. It points north. But because our compass allows us to then have a 360 degree circle which all, all circles are, I guess we, we can then go in any direction with reference to north. Right. And that is what, what's called a compass bearing. Um, so if, if the compass is pointing north and where we want to go is not north, we can use that compass bearing to still determine if we are going in the direction that we want to go, even if that direction is not north. Right. Let's talk a little bit about types of compasses, I suppose. And then we, we can, we can move on to maps.
Yeah. What kind of compasses are there? And I think maybe we have to maybe explain this joke of like why is the tiny little compass embedded in the Rambo knife hilt not a good compass? Besides the fact that you can stab yourself with it.
Right. Yeah. It's attached to something which is stabby. Generally you don't want to have your compass next to a large metal object. Right. Because it's trying to find magnetic north. It could be a non magnetic metal that the knife is made of, I guess. No idea.
What would not be a good knife.
Yeah, yeah, probably. Hey, like a, yeah, like an aluminum knife. Carbon knife maybe.
Super light, I guess. Titanium. Titanium. Is titanium magnetic?
I don't know.
No, it's not. Because it's not iron. It's not iron.
Yeah. It doesn't have any ferrous element. So generally what we want for our compass is a couple of things. We want it to be reliable, we want it to be easily readable, which means that it's much better if it is larger than your fingernail. Right. Which sorts of these tiny, they call them button compasses, these small compasses. Right. We want it to retain its northerly direction. Right. We don't want it to get bumped around and lose its magnetization or to be pointing not north because it's being pulled in another direction by something else. Right. And the way that we do that is by purchasing a quality compass and then taking good care of it. Right. So what we're looking for in a compass is A, it's not attached to a knife, B, it's not attached to a hatchet, etc. Etc. We're looking. What I prefer to use is like an orienteering style compass. A baseplate compass. Right. Which has a. It would generally have a little magnifier to help you look at small scale maps. And we'll talk about map scales later. It'll also have measuring on the side to allow you to measure distances on maps, which again, we can talk about later. It will have a compass rose, that thing around the outside.
Right.
Which you can rotate. And that will allow you to align that with the northerly direction of the arrow and to account for the difference between grid and magnetic north. If you're doing it that way. There are other types of compass and then the. Often I like to get one where the needle glows in the dark just. Just to make it easier to see in low light. Right. Or a little point on the needle glows in the dark there. In the United States, there is another type of compass. And for people who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like. I have never used one. Like, I. I don't see any need. The compass that I have has worked for the majority of my life. I don't see any need to buy another one. I don't see any need to change how I do it. But they. Those use a little sighting notch to take a compass bearing, which is another way of doing it.
Is this the lens attic?
That is a lens attic, yes. Inside. Yeah. Lens attic.
It's the Boy Scout kind of. I feel like this is like the, like, like Cub Scout compass that they gave everyone. I had one and it was like. I was like, what's the needle for? What's the little magnifying lens for that's adjustable? I'm like, I don't. What, what are these things for? I don't understand. I never learned. So.
Oh, yeah. So I think it has a sighting notch which you'd sight along to take the bearing. It has a mirror generally, which you can use for a number of things, aside from navigation, which is also useful for navigation. You can use it to check yourself out. Use it as a signal mirror. You could use it to start a fire. There are things you could do with a mirror other than that. So that might be useful for some people. If that is the sort of compass you like and that you learn to use, that's magnificent. Have at it. I know less about them because even though I've lived here for 20 years, I've just been stuck with my orienteering compass. There are also, like, there are good small compasses. So if you're running orienteering races, what a lot of people will use is a thumb compass, just a very small compass that sits on their thumb and that can give you. Obviously it's not going to give you as precise of a bearing. Right. Because it is smaller and you're not going to like sit there and align it with your map, but to give you it to check you're going on the same bearing without having to stop because you're, you're doing a race. Are people familiar with orienteering in the U.S. should I explain what that is?
I think, you know, nerds will be familiar with it. What, what is orienteering? And I think like, can we backtrack a little and explain what's a bearing?
Yes. So orienteering is a cross country human powered movement. Like generally running, walking. But I'm sure that's not how you move. Right. If you're a person who uses a wheelchair or something like that, you could still orientee. It is a competition for moving and navigating. Right. So you navigate to one point, then you navigate to another point. You're generally not running on trails. You're running on all kinds of different terrain. Right. And it's a contest of both skill and fitness. It's, I would say, more popular. I did this in high school and I don't think that's really an option for a lot of people in the United States. But it's a lot of fun. It's practical skill and it's a good way to practice your navigation skills under a bit of pressure. But you're not really at any risk, you know.
Yeah.
So a bearing is that direction on that 360 degree scale, that 360 degree compass rose. Right. With respect to north. So it is a direction. A bearing is just a measure of direction. And it's a direction we can always know because we always know north. And therefore we can look at north and look where this bearing is with respect to north. That will give us a direction to travel, if that makes sense. Yeah.
So it's like, is that the, like when I feel like people say in movies or things like we need to go 3 degrees south by southwest for 4D clicks or these phrase.
Yeah. I would not suggest moving 40 kilometers. I would consider moving like less than half a kilometer and rechecking your bearing. Especially if you're. If you're new. Right. Like unless I guess you're navigating across like the ocean or something which has no. A bearing is going to be. I guess it could be expressed in like you could express some. I suppose. Yeah. Just Saying northeast or due east or southeast is a bearing, or it would be expressed in terms of degrees, right?
What is the, like, south by southwest part or something like the double?
So if you. If you imagine. And what I'm doing for those of you who are not in mine is I'm making a cross with my fingers, right? So north, south, east, west. In between south and west is southwest, closer to south than west. But in between south and west is south, southwest. So I see. So imagine yet another cross overlaid. It's three X's overlaid. So if you're going around, right, it's north, north, northeast, northeast, east, northeast, east as we go around, right? So that those give us a sort of a general cardinal direction or the cardinal direction to being northeast, south and west. Right. So we could use that, or we could be more specific and use a bearing. And we want to be. If we can take accurate bearings, then we can navigate very accurately. Right? Because what a bearing allows us to do is to take a number of different bearings to things that we can see. And then in combination with our map, we can say, we can then locate ourselves. We can triangulate what our position is on the map. Right? Because if you imagine I am where these different lines of direction intersect, right. My bearing to this is that my bearing to this mountain over here is something else. Where they intersect, I'll do that of three points, two points, whatever. That's me. That's where I am.
I didn't understand this the first time we did the interview with.
Yeah.
And now I do.
Yeah, we did an interview with our friend Felix, and it was great. But unfortunately we had some tech diffs, so we are approaching it alone. But we are still very much in debt to these wonderful notes that he wrote. And we really appreciate all his help with this, and we are sorry we couldn't make it work. Maybe now is a good time to talk about maps.
Right?
So to find yourself on a map, you don't. There is not a little blue dot, right. Which is where you are. Right. When a map is simply a representation of an area, there could be a field expansion. There are air charts, which is wild to me. I didn't know there were air maps, but I assume there has to be. You know, logically makes sense, right? People have to navigate planes. There are sea maps and there are land maps. I am chiefly experienced with the land maps. So your map will have a number of things that you should be able to identify. Right. The first is a scale that is just how shrunken down Everything is right. So if. If it's 1 to 25,000, 1 centimeter on your map represents 25,000 centimeters in the real world. Right. And the little often. So, like, I have a compass called a Silver Ranger. If people want a product recommendation, it's a nice compass, but honestly, you could. You could also save money and get anything that silver make, and you'll be just fine. Mine on the lanyard. The lanyard's a piece. Where am I? I don't wear it around my neck generally, but you could. The lanyard has a scale. So I can look on the map and be like, okay, so if I know that I'm going on this bearing and I want to get to this mountain, I can measure that distance. And then it will. It will allow me to measure and then work out how many kilometers that will be. Right. I will say navigation, like many other things, is just easier in the metric system. But maybe that's just my opinion because it's much easier when everything's working in units of a hundred. Right. Or a thousand or what have you. Like, it's easy to do those calculations, but other people who maybe grew up using miles and inches and qubits and spans and furlongs and those kind of things like to use those, and maybe it's easier if that's what you're used to, then you. You should just do that. It's fine. And if you're in the U.S. that's what your maps are going to be in. So you're going to have to learn. Another thing your map will have is symbols. And these symbols will depict various things. And there are different types of symbols, different symbols to represent different things on different maps that are used in different countries and that are familiar, that will be familiar to people who navigate in different countries. The way that, you know what each symbol means is something called the legend. And the legend is what tells. It's like you can look at the symbol and be like, oh, okay, that means water. That means altitude.
Does it also tell you where to find the moon runes?
Yeah, that's just marked with a large X. That's a universal thing all around the world, actually.
Yeah.
That's the one thing that cartographers have agreed on since the beginning of time. Yeah. If you see that, that's where the runes are. And the ring, the one true ring, is always marked on there as well. Any given map, that's another way of navigating. Instead of north, you can just go towards Mordor. Another thing, talking of altitude rate that you have on Map are things called contour lines. Contour lines are. They've become very trendy. You'll see people with like topographical designs on their, like on their telephone case or their, you know, their apparel, their backpack maybe. So when you see these like little, little sort of odd shaped. They're not circles, but they're, they're like irregular forms that I'm not describing this very well. What are topographic.
Parallel squiggly lines?
Yeah, parallel squiggly lines, exactly. Yeah. So what a contour does is it joins of the same altitude on a map. So if you are looking at a very steep slope, the contours will be stacked very closely together. Right. Because we're going from one altitude level to another to another very quickly. They can be in different, there are different. So some maps will have 20 foot contour intervals, some maps will have say 100 foot. Right. If you're in Alaska, some parts of Alaska aren't mapped to such a high definition. So they will only have 100 foot ones available. But generally you'll be able to see like a relatively small change in altitude. Right. And so you'll be able to see if these contours are sort of. They start further spaced out and they're coming into a middle. Well, that's the summit. Right. Of a. Oh, it could also be the bottom of a valley. And the way you will know is because on these contours they're little pieces of writing that say the altitudes that that particular contour represents. Sometimes not on every one, but you'll be able to look at those and see. Okay, that's 4,000 foot. That's 4,140. Okay, so there's 140 foot gain there. And then because you also have your scale, you can then see over what distance that gain is occurring. And if you wanted to, you could calculate the gradient of the slope if that was the thing that you like to do.
Okay. And this is like good for like, if you're like you, if you're trying to get from point A to point B and you take a bear, you're like straight line bearing or whatever is like through an area and then you start to look at the topography and you're like, oh, if I go along this straight line, I'm going to get to some point where suddenly over a very short distance it's gaining or losing to altitude. And that might be a cliff.
Yes, exactly. Yeah, you can avoid getting cliffed out. You could just make an easier route for yourself. Right. But yes, you can yeah, you could. Now you do have to remember that let's say if you're mapped in hundred foot intervals, a 20 foot cliff isn't showing up.
I see, Right.
So we still have to, you know, I mean, look where you're going when you're out and around walking, I suppose, you know. But yes, that is very useful for doing that. But we can also use those contours to find ourselves. Right. If we are in a place and we can see a mountain with our eyes, we look at the map and say, oh, where are the contours arranged in such a fashion they could see a mountain? Right. They're coming closer and closer together, like concentric. Okay, well there's that. And I can see that you might be able to see, okay, this mountain has a little plateau halfway up on the left hand side. Okay, well that's that. And then you can look at your map. Where's that plateau with my contours? Right. Maybe we can also see a waterfall coming down. We look for a little blue line on the map. That's a river. Right. Then we look where the contours stack up and oh look, that's where the waterfall is. And so once we become adept at reading maps, we can almost see a landscape in our mind. Right. They will highlight things like foliage. They might obviously include things like trails, roads, human settlements. And so once we become accustomed to using maps, we can take a look at that map and we can say, oh, this is roughly what this place would look like. Right. This is what this place, you know, might appear like. And again, it depends the specific, the specifics of the map. Like, I remember Felix said he'd seen a map of like, I think it was Denmark, where the contour lines only, only covered 2 meters of elevation because the whole country is so flat. Right. That they just to make any use of contours, like the contour union mandated that they, that they have them at 2 meter.
Oh my God, that's really funny.
But it is through the contours that we make a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional world.
Okay.
Another thing I would say in maps, about maps is that these days you very often don't have to pay for them. So I like to buy maps. It's just part of my personality, you know. But most of the time if I actually need a map, I can print it out. And there are various free topographical mapping resources that you can find online. My advice to you, if you are printing out a map of an area that you want to go, would be to Print out. If you're only printing out on, like, legal size paper. Right. You may want to print out a few of the adjoining pieces of paper just so that you have a sense of the broader area and that you put it inside something that is waterproof. And you can get map cases for this. Because even if it's not going to rain, if you sweat on your map and all the lines blur, it's not very useful to you. Right now, this thing that was incredibly precise has disappeared. It's a splodge.
And everything in nature is wet. Except where I live, where everything is dry.
Yeah. But then even you yourself will become wet if you go out there for too long. Another thing that I would remind people about maps people often overlook this is people love to use red torches, head torches at night. Right. Because they think it doesn't damage their night vision as much.
Yeah. We've really been fed this myth.
Yeah. I think you can use any color that isn't white, and it would be preferable to using white, is my understanding. Red. There are a couple of things you're not going to see with red or they're not going to appear as sort of contrasting as they ought to be. One is blood. Right. And another one is the contour lines on maps, which are generally kind of a pinkish red. So if you're looking at them with red light, you won't see them. Right. So to bear that in mind when navigating at night with a map, something that people, I think, often overlooked, the generally like, I'll just put them in, you know, those little. Did you have ring binders when you were in high school and then you have the little sheets. Yeah. For the younger listeners, this is a thin and plastic pouch in which a piece of paper can live for years. That's what we did before computers.
Yeah. We used to have these, like, little binders. When I used to do a lot more, like, border stuff, we had this big binders of different areas, and it'd be like, this is the blah, blah, blah area. And then we'd have these 8 and a half by 11 map sections that were all printed out and in the little pouches. And you'd be like, oh, I'm going there. And then you'd take them out of the binder and you definitely put them back for the next people to use.
Yeah, that was extremely important. Yeah. So when we combine, the map, by the way, will point to grid north.
Right.
So we're going to have to adjust from magnetic north, and this becomes more of an issue the further north you get, right? And so the way that you're generally going to know what the adjustment is is to, is to Google it for your area, right? Or to just know it. And then you can adjust, you can adjust for the difference between those two things, right? But when we have both of those things, we can then navigate very accurately, right? Because we can, we can locate ourselves first of all, and then we can travel along a bearing for a certain distance and then we can check if we're on the right bearing, right? We could, we can check based on what we should be seeing on the map and what we are seeing on the ground. Then we can check our bearing again. Maybe we want to turn a corner here so we don't go off that cliff, right? Or maybe we want to a pivot here because it looks like there's a big hill and we can just go around the hill and that will probably save us some energy. Once we have both those things, we're accustomed to using them, we can navigate very effectively without having to depend on a battery operated device without having to. So for instance, I travel to places sometimes which are a little bit, you know, they're not the U.S. for instance, when I'm going to Myanmar, I don't want to take a Garmin either watch or GPS device because those GPS devices themselves emit a signal which can be tracked, right? So in that instance, I would just take a map and a compass and be fairly confident that I could navigate with that as long as I got a good enough map. It is harder to navigate when you can't see things, right? Because then you don't have your points of reference. You can't be like, oh, well, I should be coming up upon a river, right? Until your feet get wet. If you can't, then you don't know. So when we combine those two things and we can see, we can navigate very well. But even when we can't see, right? Let's take a white out sometimes. Your Garmin device picking on Garmin. There are other GPS devices, but my Garmin just broke. So sometimes your Garmin device doesn't work, right? In my experience, about once every two years your Garmin device just gives up on life and you're expected to spend an insane amount of money on another one. In a white out, you might not be able to see the sky, right? So that can be difficult for your GPS to get your location. But at least we can if we know where we're at. Let's say we're, we're in a whiteout and we need to get to a cabin. Well, we know where we're at. We can look at our map, right. And we say, okay, there's a cabin a mile east of me. So let me get it, Let me get the old compass out or whatever the bearing is, and I'll head along that bearing. And then you can look on your map and say, even if you can't see things, you can say, all right, I should be going uphill. Am I going uphill? Yes. So am I following that bearing and going uphill? Okay, that's good. Seems like I'm going in the right direction. And you can see, oh, if I walk a certain distance, there might be a cliff. I have to be careful of that. How do we know how far we've walked? We can do that with some prior experience by knowing how many steps it takes us to walk 100 meters. Right. You could also do this with yards, of course. And the way we would do that is finding a 100 meter fixed distance. It could be like a football pitch. Right. Could be a running track. You could also use a GPS to determine that. But for accuracy, I would prefer if you had a very accurately measured 100 meter fixed distance. And we're going to walk that. And we're not going to do it once, we're going to do it a few times. Right. We're going to get one of those clickers like you use when you're counting people into a nightclub. And we're going to count. Yeah, to take steps. Yeah, we'll do it on one. Left foot, right foot, your choice, whichever you prefer. And we will count how many steps we do. And we will do that a few times. Right. And then we will check for any gross errors. And generally if we're. We will then try and determine how many steps it takes us to do 10 meters. And if we are between two numbers, we're going to round up because we will generally take smaller paces when we are tired, we will take smaller paces when we're going uphill. We will take smaller paces when we're carrying load. Right. And then when we're navigating, we can either count. Okay, let's say it takes me seven paces on my left foot to go 10 meters. Okay, nice. Right. Well, every 10 meters I can get. So what I have is just a little set of beads. They just look like.
Okay.
And they slide along a piece of string. I just 3D printed mine.
Cool.
So you can buy cool tactical ones that cost money, but you shouldn't really spend money on them.
You can use a rosary. This is, I don't know why I'm suggesting this, but yeah, I have these.
Little prayer beads in Kurdistan you could use. But you. Ideally you'd want them to slide along a bit, right. So you get a sense of which ones have passed.
Yeah, don't do that.
Yeah. So unless you, unless you move the necklace yourself, I guess. But you'd want to. The idea is you don't have to pay active attention so much, right?
Yes. Yeah.
Like I find just when I'm. When I'm walking and I'm knackered and I'm just pushing to get to somewhere I can do 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, bead one, you know, like. Yeah, and. But that's about the most mental capacity I have, you know, so I'll do that. And then when I get to 10, I have another little section of beads and I move one of those, right. And that's, that's then when I've done. So I've done 100 there, right? 10 times 10. So 10, lots of 10 meters. And you could do the same on a bigger scale if you wanted to. But if you're navigating where you literally can't see, you want to keep things on a fairly small scale. So then if I'm looking at my map, right, I know where I started. I'm trying to get to my cabin in my white out snow. Okay, well I know I've got 100 meters on that bearing uphill, so I can still find myself on the map, right? And I haven't had to use a GPS device or my GPS device doesn't work. Okay, well I know after 200 meters because again I can use the edge of my compass to measure distance, right on the map. I know that after 200 meters I want to do a little right and that'll take me away from that cliff, go 100 meters, then go left again and get back on my course to avoid that cliff or what have you. So now I can very accurately do that, right? And if you start practicing this and a way to learn this is not to like buy an expensive compass, buy an expensive map, leave it in your truck and never use it until the world ends, right? The way to do this is when you're going on a hike where you are comfortable anyway, where you know where you're going anyway, just be like, hey, can I find myself on my map currently? Okay, well let's pop it out and have a look, let you know what if I needed to get back to the car. How would I do it? Okay, well, let's pop out the map and have a bit of a fiddle around, see if we can do it with the compass, you know? Yeah.
In these, like, contained situations where you're like, not. Probably not at risk or depending on it.
Yes. Where you're safe. Right. Where.
Yeah.
Where your life will not end if you. If you mess up. Right. And like, those are that. It's a great way to start to learn. Right. That's how I learned when I was in high school that literally, like on our school playing field. Right. Going from one traffic cone to another traffic cone and then being given a bearing to know which traffic cone to go to next. Now, when you're 13, you just watch the kid in front of you. Right. But yeah, but it was still fun. Still a good way to learn. So you could even do that with your friends if you wanted to. Right. That's more campus, I guess, just directly going on dead reckoning, like straight along a bearing rather than using a map. So that would be a good way to learn if you do find yourself, I guess, in extremists needing to navigate and then say you've trapped your arm in a slot canyon, spent a number of hours, eventually sawed it off with your pocket knife. And just for the sake of a story. And you now need to get to help because you've tourniquet the arm. Good on you. Maybe they'll make a film about you one day. But how do we find north in that situation where we've neglected to bring our map and compass.
Right. Yeah. Well. Or when it's broken or snapped.
Sure.
Or whatever.
Yeah. We fell and it broke. That's a large electromagnet deployed in different locations. It's fucking with our compass. Whatever. The. The way that we can do that is that nature also knows which way is north. Right. Because many of you will be familiar with the sun if you're listening to this podcast, it is the source of all life. So where I am, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
Right.
So that can give us a rough idea. We can also see certain mosses that are only going to grow on one side of a tree.
Right.
So there's going to be the southern. Likewise, anthills are generally on the southern side of trees in Northern Hemisphere.
Okay. Yeah. Where I live, there's this one cactus that always points. It leans in a southerly direction.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. I mean, in California, like those kind of the classic Central California, like meadow with the big oak trees. Those tend to be like on a certain aspect. Right. They're generally not on north facing slopes because they tend to get less sunlight and they're less warm.
Right.
Trees will even concentrate leaves on the south side in kind of more northerly climates. And so there will be different ones of these depending on your location and where you are in the world. So you are going to have to. If you spend some time outside with a compass and you enjoy looking at nature anyway, then you can work some of this stuff out. And in most cases you can also look it up. You can also use. If you are like an analog watch person, because of the aforementioned Garmin fails, I've become an analog watch person. You can actually use your watch to find north and south. And I believe in theory you could also use your compass to tell the time. Again, that will differ depending on if you're in northern southern hemisphere. So you should check that based on where you are. But that's if you have a watch with an hour hand and a clear 12, like a noon. Right.
Wait, how do you do that?
I think it's you.
How does that work?
Let me just check really quick. I'm pretty sure that you point the hour hand at the. You point the hour hand at the sun in between there and noon is south. But I want to check now because it made me self conscious.
Cut this little chunk out.
Yeah. Put the hour hand at sun. Find the midpoint between the hour hand, the 12 o' clock mark. This midpoint indicates south. Yes. Let me just check out who that was. The AI answer. Yeah. Okay. So yes, if. Yes, I am. I did remember correctly. So, yeah. If you want to know how to find north with your analog wristwatch, first of all, like, start holding it flat, I guess. Right. You know, don't be holding it. Don't be, hold. Hold it parallel with the ground, not at 90 degrees to the ground. And then you'll want to point the hour hand, that's the small hand of your watch, at the sun. In between there and noon is south.
Oh, cool.
So that gives you. It's good. For instance, I do a decent amount of navigating in the desert, right? And often the desert can be devoid of landmarks. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes people think the desert's all sand, huge. That's not really the case. But in some places it can be hard to work out where you are. Generally to myself is Mexico, and to my north is a big road. And so if I'm really hosed I can walk north towards that big road. Right. I suppose I could walk south until I showed up on a camera or something as well, and maybe get rescued that way. But it's a good idea to have at least a sense of roughly where your points of rescue might be. Right. And how you might head to them. You know, if you can visualize a map in your head, then this is easier. But you could navigate using your watch if you needed to. There are. You can also use the stars, Right. Famously, the North Star points north. Shiny star. I don't know if the. There's a way to navigate using the. Using the Big Dipper. I think it's the. The. The Big Dipper will point you to the North Star. There's also a way to find it using Orion that I'm more familiar with, but Felix was more familiar with the Big Dipper one. I did look it up, and it does look a bit easier than the way I'm familiar with. But I think that will, again, vary based on your location, like what hemisphere you're in. Yeah. So, yeah.
I'm so curious what they do in the Southern Hemisphere. In a lot of things.
What they do is they. They hop across the equator with a. Like a bucket. That's draining, you know, and they just watch it. Watch the bucket get confused. Yeah. They have a cork and a needles, and the cork spins the other way. I've been to the Southern Hemisphere quite a few times, but. Yeah.
Can you have. Can you do that? Is the needle floating on something in a bucket of water? Is that.
Sure, yeah.
Yeah.
That's another way to make a compass, Right.
You could.
If you had a means. If you had a needle and a means to magnetize the needle and a floating object which allowed that. Which allowed the needle to rotate. So, yeah, the kind of classic survival one, right. Is the needle on a cork in a bucket of water, and then you magnetize the tip of the needle and that points to north. Okay, that's cool. Yeah. So I know with the watch thing, when you're doing it in the Southern Hemisphere, it's the other way round. You point noon at the sun, and then you bisect that angle between noon and the hour hand on your watch. So it's not as simple as it's backwards. Right. It's not that you point the hour hand and it's north. You're pointing something different to the sun.
Yeah.
Southern Hemisphere listeners should check these things.
Yeah. Kind of points me to this thing that came up when we were talking to Felix about it. But it's like when you're. I feel like if you know that you're going somewhere, obviously if you're with proper preparation, you can, you can be prepared for a lot of situations. You can bring the tools that you want to have and maybe those tools can break and then you're in another situation. But it's like, I think in general becoming more familiar with just your surroundings or the layout of where you want to be or kind of known landmarks and things like you were talking about. If you know where a major interstate is or something, then it's like, yeah, that's a landmark you can always follow. Or if you like rivers, mountains. I think about this a lot with like, I don't really do this anymore and I want to, but it was like when I was a young ogle and going to random cities and then being like trying to get around without a smartphone. One of the first things that I would do is look at maps of the city to just understand the general layout of it. Be like, okay, I'm on the southeastern side of the place and that's what all of these roads look like. And then I could generally get around the city, even though I wasn't familiar with it.
Yeah, totally. If you're in the US On a macro scale, if you know that the even numbered interstates go east, west and the odd ones go north, south. So if you know that you got off the Interstate 8. Right. Well, then you either have to. It's going east, west. You either have to go north or south to get to it. Right. And you're going to hit it. And so then if you're roughly aware of that, then you can work out which way to go. Right? Yeah. So, yeah, having an. Or like, if you're in a grid city, it's very. It's often kind of easy. Right. Because they'll have like grid numbers going east, west and letters going north, south or something like that.
Yeah, yeah. It's generally just fun. And I think maybe another thing I just wanted to mention was it was like this came up with when Felix was talking about. It was like a really good reason to, I think, learn about all of this stuff and why I want to learn more about it is that it's a good exercise for just becoming more aware and more in touch with your surroundings and how to move through them. And it's like the fact that you can then do it when it's like, I always fear the day in which the Internet just turns off and that's like the new form of control. If it's a collapse, then I'm like, okay, great, yay, it's a collapse. But if the government turns the Internet.
Off or something that happened in Myanmar, right? That government turned the Internet off. God. Allegedly. I guess just sent some people to some like telecoms office and started unplugging stuff until people didn't have signal.
Oh no.
But yeah, it also like, it also has. It's funny how I think about how I interact with the outdoors compared to friends who aren't as familiar with map and compass navigation. Like I was talking to a friend who is a big hunter, right? And they were saying, oh, they were struggling to find these, these deer that they were looking for. And I was like, huh. I always see deer like on, you know like when it's, when it's cold, right? I'll see them on, on a south facing slope and in a place where there are acorns. And acorns are generally, you know, on those south facing slopes in plateaus. Acorns don't gather up on steep contour areas. So like, because I'm just aware of where north is, when I'm seeing an animal, I'm like, huh, they're always on that southerly slope here. Or like, you know, the opposite could be true in hot places like Southern California, right? They're not going to want to be on those southeastern slopes to get heated up all day, right? They're going to want to be on north facing slopes to stay cold. But like I don't have to go read some biology report because I'm out and about and I know where north is. It just sort of that knowledge, just a cruise because I'm just observing things, right? And so in that sense it helps me understand why things are happening in nature versus just. And I don't have to get my phone out and see all the work notifications and shit, which is I guess we should talk a little bit about. Maps are inherently political documents, right? What is included and not included on a map is choice where is included not included in a map of the choice. Felix gave the great example of old timey maps having dragons. But these are just, yeah, unlikely dragons actually existed, right? Like it's just not impossible. Like sometimes old timey maps would even like before they had really good ways of measuring things would appear closer that took less time to travel to. And the reason they took less time to travel to is someone who built a road. And the reason the road was built was probably commerce, right? So things would appear closer even when they're actually geographically more distant. And yes, the dragons would just be places that they hadn't been. Right. But there may be things you are interested on that are not on your map. Right. For instance, when I am out and about and I'm exploring a new backcountry area and I find a place where there is a water source, I live in a place where water is quite scarce, I will mark that on my map. Right? Because that could be very useful to me. Or if I'm planning a journey, I could be. Huh. Well, I don't have to carry 6 liters, I can carry 2 liters. Refill here. If I'm thinking about where to camp, it's nice to camp near water if you can. So, like, that may not be on your map. It may also be that your map is old and things have emerged since your map. Right? Like if you were navigating around the southern border of the United States, there are walls now that weren't there before, right? Those both obviously, like, absolutely affront to the dignity of humanity. But like, also, if you're navigating and you're like, well, I see this. You could get. If you didn't realize why that's not in your map and you were looking for that landmark, you might mistake something else for it. Right. And that might lead you to making a navigational error. So it's good to know when your map was made. And just think about this. Like, think about. I have a digital mapping software where I can filter by tree type, which is super cool. I love that. Because like you. Then you can find these things are masts, right? Yeah. And your chestnut. So you can. Some places you have apple trees, crab apples, you're going to see more animals there because animals are coming to eat those things because they're calorie dense. And then things are. Other animals are coming to eat those animals. And it's a nice place to see animals. Right. Google Maps, on the other hand, does not offer that. But you can filter by type of thing you can purchase, right? Because it's. It's a map for capitalism. It's not a map for seeing animals.
Which was Felix's example of like, why they're less detailed in these like, like wilderness areas is because there's nothing to sell you.
Yeah, it's not. People don't put. Like originally maps were done like as a nation state project. Right. Or as a state project, a way of sort of mapping and therefore controlling areas. Right. Like this is ours and we have mapped it and we know it and therefore we exercise dominion over it. But over time, these more detailed maps, like there's a reason that Google's driving those weird cars with a camera on top all around your neighborhood. But you don't see them in the mountains. Right.
You.
Google doesn't have like an off trail car which it's using to like trek the Sierras or whatever.
Yeah.
And so they rely on satellite imagery for those.
Yeah, yeah. Or I don't know. Cartography is like infinitely interesting and it's like there's a lot of really creative ways that people have been using cartography. I feel like it's like you were talking about kind of like the politicized nature of the maps as we get these different ideas of things. And it's like I love all the different projections of the globe, you know, like the, the one we've probably most people have seen if you live in the United States. And then there's like all these other maps that like reorient things to like and, or put things in like appropriate proportion. And it's like, it's shocking. It's like they're like almost you're. It almost feels like looking at like a different place, you know?
Yeah, yeah. Like that's a great example of how maps are political. I'm trying to find them when I was. I think there's like an Afrocentric projection of the world.
Yeah, I've seen that one.
Things like that like. Right. Which, like you're wondering why Greenland is so massive on some maps. Because you're trying to take a spherical thing. Right. And then generally the one that people are familiar with is the, the Mercator projection.
But yeah, which I saw someone did this funny outline of it once. It was a very selective outline. And apparently there's one way to make it so that it looks like a cat playing with a yarn ball and.
I can't see that one. Yeah, I haven't seen that one. I'll check that one out. But yeah, you're taking a thing which is not flat and trying to make it flat. And you're doing that with any map. Right. But the bigger scale, the more distorted things get.
Yeah, yeah. So another thing that I used to get my friends to do, and this is both about becoming more familiar with your surroundings and also sort of the hilarious, this isn't politicized nature of maps, but it's like the things we note. So when I would get to a new town or something and go meet up with my friends who live there, one of the first things that I'd ask them to do is to draw me a map with interesting things on it.
Oh, fun.
Yeah. And it would elicit these very funny things. Like, when I was staying in Baltimore once, I was like, hey, friendo, draw me a map of cool things to do around Baltimore. And it was a very fun map to follow because it'd be, like, three or four blocks this way, three or four blocks that way. But, like, literally over half the things on the map were liquor stores. And so it was. It was less appealing for me because I don't drink.
Yeah.
But it was still fun to follow the maps. Yeah, there are all sorts of weird little, like, niche things on it. Like. Like here there is, like, a weird hole in the fence, and if you, like, find it and do this other thing, then you can find this other cool thing. And they're like, you know, nothing's to scale. It's like three or four blocks or, like, I don't know, walk for 20 minutes, and it's a lot of fun. If you, like, want a creative thing and, like, sort of navigating the world in cartography, ask your friends to make you maps.
Yeah. It's fun to navigate without that, like, very precise idea of your location that people are so used to. Right. Like, it's liberating to be like. I used to do that all the time when I lived in Barcelona. Just be like, I'm going to be wandering in a southerly direction for about 45 minutes and making my way home. And. Yeah. I'd always see different things. Right. I'd always, like, find something or someone interesting and wander around. Like, I love to explore cities in that way without necessarily knowing where I'm going or, like, having an idea of how I'm going to get there.
Yeah. Is this the idea of. So some people I know are trying to explore. Deriving. Is that the phrase? It's like, in. I forget. The person who wrote it, one of those French thinkers. It's not Guy d'. Ivoire. Maybe it is Guy d'. Ivoire. Yeah, Guy d'. Ivoire. The theory of the derive. It's this idea of, like, drifting. Oh, yeah, Yeah.
I think it's. It. Is it derive?
Yes.
Or would that be.
I can't pronounce French.
Yeah, I know, I know. Yeah. Yes. I like this idea of, like. Yeah. The unplanned journey. Right.
Yeah.
Especially through an urban landscape. I think it's very interesting to just wander through cities. I love to do, like, often when I'm. When I'm traveling for work, I will book a couple of days at either end just to meander in a city. I don't like to go to a place and only see the difficult things that are happening there. But just to see how people are living their lives in the city is fun for me. I'd encourage people to wander a little bit more.
Yeah, well, that's probably all about. We have time for today. Did you have any closing thoughts on map and compass navigation or.
Yeah, I guess all this shit takes time, right? You're not going to buy one and become very adept with it overnight and that's fine. Things take work and we can do hard things. I have a little compass that goes on the wristband of my once again broken Garmin watch. So I'm very bitter about that because like I kind of rely on it for work to a degree.
Pure listening Garmin.
Yeah. Garmin know exactly how pissed off I am because they used to write reviews of their products and they've stopped returning my emails after I talked shit talking their products. They're very aware, but I had a little.
We shake our fists in your direction if we could use your device to figure out what that is, but we can't.
I'm enjoying actually being, being liberated from a watch which bleeps every time someone sends me an email. And I'm enjoying wearing this watch that I got from my dad. It tells me the time and I like that. And I remember my dad had to get when I was a kid. So that's nice. Not like a particularly fancy watch or anything, but it's just nice. I had a little compass on the bottom of my watch so that I could just have an idea of like north, south, east, west. As I was going around and especially when I'm hiking, I have a wrist compass I use sometimes as well for that if you don't want to spend any money. But have a smartphone. Every smartphone I've ever encountered. I learned this when I was taking a wilderness medicine class or something for search and rescue. You scroll, you search compass and most phones will just pull up a compass which would give you. So if you just do that while you're walking about, that's a really good way to get a sense of where north is and thus south, east and west and sort of see how that relates to the world as you pass through it. I think that would be a good way of beginning to learn to navigate. Don't pay for maps. That would be my other piece of advice. Get them for free.
Or get them from an ancestor that has passed them down to you to fulfill a strange prophecy and hold them up to the moon so that you can find all those secret moon letters.
Moon runes.
Moon moons.
Yeah, yeah. That's another way to get a map. If you have a moon room map, please contact us. We would like to come navigate with you.
Yes. Thanks so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, then go walk around and do so in a new and a different way. Maybe with a map and a compass. Maybe you set up a scavenger hunt with with your friends. Or maybe you plot escape routes because the world as we know it is changing and growing more and more terrifying. But mostly do it to find strange old buried treasure where dragons are now living. Also, if you enjoyed this podcast, then you can support it. And you can support it by sending us your ancient maps with moon runes. And you can also support it by supporting our publisher, Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness. If you haven't been able to tell, I really like weird old maps and Lord of the Rings, and you can support Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness by wandering around in the wilderness. Here's the transition that I've been looking for. By wandering around in the wilderness with your friends or strangers. Well, maybe not with strangers. I don't know about that one.
Maybe they'll become friends.
Yeah, they could become friends. And you can support Strangers by checking out our website, tangledwilderness.org where we've got a bunch of cool books and stuff and zines, and I promised that I wouldn't sell you things, but here I am selling you things. But they're cool things, and they're things that support us and support this show. And there are cool things that you can buy. You can also check us out on patreon@patreon.com Strangersinatangled wilderness, where for different tiers of support, you can get different cool things. Like, I don't know when this is gonna air, but we've been coming up with fun new promos around our Zine of the Month club. And you can also get us to think or acknowledge a thing of your choosing by signing up for our acknowledgments tier. And we would like to thank these wonderful people. Thank you. Be kind and talk to strangers, which I will amend to be kind and walk around in the wilderness with strangers. Thank you, Na Uliksei and Alder Tikva's favorite Stick, the Waterfront Project, Nico the Kao Initiative, Groot the Dog, the Black Trowel Collective, Dolly Parton and Edgar Meowlen Poe Accordians, the Experimental Farm Network arguing about what to shout out. Tenebris Press, Potatoes. Staying Hydrated. Brought to you by Hannah. Simone Weil, which I guess is also some French thinker or writer.
Yes. She's a French anarchist. Fought in the Daruti column in his fantasy Civil War.
Wow. I usually don't do last names and someone put Simone Weil. So I was just saying Simone for a while, and then I realized that that was a person in history. And I was like, oh, no, we should shout out Simone Weil.
She burnt herself cooking some eggs during the Spanish Civil War, I guess.
Yeah. Thank you. Rockstar. The Astoria Food Pantry. The Athens People's assembly of Athens, Georgia. Opticuna, TSNB, baby Acab and her three great pups. Sarah, Mr. Crafty. Your Canadian friend Mark Tiny Nonsense. The Golden Gate 26. The Ko Initiative again. Because they're just that fucking cool. Oh, actually, I've been looking for someone's contact for this. Whoever our patron is. That's the KO Initiative. Can you send us a message on Patreon? Because I want to. I really want to get the KAO Initiative on the show, and I can't find your contact information. So send us a dm. Thank you. The Incredible Ren Arai. Alexander Gopal. A Future for Abby, Yoon Hee, Max. The Enchanted Rats of Turtle Island. Lancaster Chooses Love. Karen. The Canadian Socialist Rifle Association. The Massachusetts chapter of a different Socialist rifle Association. Verrel in West Virginia. Blink, Cat, Shulva, Jason, Jenny and Phoebe the Cats. Aiden, Yuki the dog. Sunshine, Amber Ephemeral Appalachian Liberation Library. Portland Seadron, Hackerspace, Boldfield, the People's University of Palestine. Julia Carson, Lord Harkin Community Books of Stone Mountain, Georgia. Princess Miranda, Janice and Odell, Ally Paparuna, Milica, Theo, sj, Paige, David, Dana, Micah, Kirk, Chris, Micaiah, Nicole and Tikva the Dog and Hoss the Dog. We hope everyone's doing as well as they can with everything that's going on in the world. And go out and get lost so you can find yourself or whatever. I don't know.