A Treasure Hunt: A Guest Post by Tristan Gooley
The wonders of the natural world are explored in intricate, stunning detail in Tristan Gooley’s latest. Discover how nature evolves and thrives throughout the changing seasons, and uncover the hidden miracles that nature has in store for us. Read on for an exclusive essay from Tristan Gooley on writing The Hidden Seasons.
Hardcover $25.95
The Hidden Seasons: A Calendar of Nature's Clues
The Hidden Seasons: A Calendar of Nature's Clues
In Stock Online
Hardcover $25.95
From the New York Times–bestselling author of The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs, an eye-opening, totally original approach to the perennially popular topic of the changing seasons, revealing a whole world of clues and signs that show there’s much more to see and explore than spring, summer, winter, and fall
From the New York Times–bestselling author of The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs, an eye-opening, totally original approach to the perennially popular topic of the changing seasons, revealing a whole world of clues and signs that show there’s much more to see and explore than spring, summer, winter, and fall
My work is a treasure hunt, but the gold I seek is weightless and invisible. It is also invaluable, for when I do strike fresh insight, it changes the way I—and my readers—see the world. After decades of searching for clues and signs in nature, I have a method that works, is fruitful, and yields great rewards. But I was always a rebel and find it uncomfortable sticking to any regimen for long periods, even my own. This is what it looks like when it’s ticking along smoothly.
My approach is triangular, a collection of three overlapping inquiries: I spend a lot of time in nature, I meet people with rare outdoor knowledge, and I read widely, from recent academic articles to ancient sources. I’m looking for meaning. I’m pursuing signs, searching for colors, shapes, scents, sounds, or patterns that unlock something deeper. In my last book, How to Read a Tree, I shared the many shapes in a tree that yield direction; there are more horizontal branches on the south side, and fewer and more vertical branches on the north side, for example.
Each of my books is a spoke in a wheel. Let me explain. At the hub of the wheel is the simple but potent idea that everything in nature has meaning; it is a clue. Nothing is random. Every single thing we sense outdoors reveals something else, and I do mean everything. In my public talks, I challenge audiences to hit me with something they have seen outdoors in recent weeks and promise to reveal a sign within it. Last night, I answered that birds facing a different way at lunchtime than breakfast means a change in wind direction, and therefore a major weather change is on the way.
This is the core philosophy of my work. Everything has a cause and that reveals something about the world around us. A rainbow is beautiful, but this beauty unfolds in new ways when we sense its colors more deeply, knowing that they reveal the size of raindrops. A strong red color means large raindrops, or “lots of red means a wet head.”
Back to my method: in each book, I approach this core concept of meaning in nature, this hub, from a new angle, and these are the spokes. In my latest book, The Hidden Seasons, the philosophy is the same, but there is a fresh angle, a new way in, a new spoke. I wanted to understand why we see the things we do when we do and why there are sometimes surprises.
The book led me to intriguing people and places on my quest, from Scottish gamekeepers to Omani goatherds. The result is a month-by-month guide for what to look for in plant, animal, land, celestial, water, and weather clues. It is a seasonal guide to the meaning we will find in meteor showers, butterflies, wildflowers, cloud shapes, grasses, the moon, and much more. It is transformative, because we experience the outdoors in a fundamentally richer way when we reward our brain with clues to look for. It is what we were born to do; our brain has evolved to deduce things, to find meaning and solve mysteries, and we feel better when we let it do exactly that, especially outside.
My goal in each book is to radically change the readers’ experience when outdoors, whether in a city park or in the back of beyond. My favorite frequent feedback from readers is, “I will never see things the same way again.” The things in question change with each book, and now, in my newest book, the seasons take center stage.
Tristan Gooley is the New York Times–bestselling author of How to Read a Tree, How to Read Water, How to Read Nature, The Natural Navigator, The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs, The Secret World of Weather, The Nature Instinct, and The Hidden Seasons. He has led expeditions on five continents, climbed mountains in three, and is the only living person to have both flown and sailed solo across the Atlantic. His more than two decades of pioneering outdoor experience include research among tribal peoples in some of the remotest regions on Earth. He is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation and the Royal Geographical Society, a vice-chairman of Trailfinders, and he runs the world’s only school of natural navigation.
NaturalNavigator.com @thenaturalnavigator
