The Essential Wilderness Navigator

About this book

As in all the "Essential" series titles the text is woven page by page with sidebars photos and drawings to create a highly visual reading experience. This combination is uniquely effective in propelling the reader to a fundamental mastery of map and compass use. But The Essential Wilderness Navigator does more than teach the disciplines of reading compasses and interpreting topographical maps important as these are. It includes exercises for developing our sixth sense of spatial awareness-what psychologist call cognitive maps. It offers tips for reading natures highway signs from vegetation bands to wind ripples in snow or sand to the sun and stars. It covers the particular challenges of mountain snow and desert navigation. It summarizes the research on how and why men and women navigate differently. And above all it teaches the language and thought processes of the experienced navigator. To understand bearing lines of position baselines bracketing aiming off and catch points is to know how to use these techniques consciously at first but later with unconscious mastery.