- Time of past OR future Camino
- Frances, autumn/winter; 2004, 2005-2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015
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Having been born on a farm in the west of Ireland we were tought to read the weather by our grandparents and parents.
and I learned from a friend who is Lakota, that 'bears' tails' is what they call the cloud formations that swirl up at the end….rain coming within the week.Great article Margaret, thank you. Having been born on a farm in the west of Ireland we were tought to read the weather by our grandparents and parents. This was very important for planning the work ahead, sadly this has all died out. My grandkids sometimes look at me like I have too heads when I tell them it will rain because of the ring around the moon or because "it has the smell of rain" etc.
Its great to see these traditional methods of navigation being thought again.
We call them mare tails here, every place have their own name for the same things.and I learned from a friend who is Lakota, that 'bears' tails' is what they call the cloud formations that swirl up at the end….rain coming within the week.
That's what we gardeners call Horsetail! Lovely in situ, but a bane for gardeners…..We call them mare tails here, every place have their own name for the same things.
White mans magic.Cherokee use this:
http://www.wunderground.com/
Hilarious…..love some comic relief in the morning to start my day.White mans magic.
"Reading the wind" takes me back to when I was a young man living by the wild Atlantic coast of Galway,in the west of Ireland.I used to go fishing with an old local man called Dara.we fished for Mackrel which he would salt and box to sell in local markets during the harsh winter months.We always came home with a boat laden with fish and I'd ask Dara how he knew the exact spot in the mile wide bay to stop the boat and fish.His reply was "I listen to the wind,the wind speaks to me". The last time I saw Dara before I emigrated to England,I asked " tell me the secret of the wind"Dara laughed and said,"Mackerel is an oily fish,and when there are hundreds of them In a shoal weaving about under the water the oil floaats to the surface ,and I steer my boat into the wind until I can smell the oil,and that's how the wind speaks to me" Thank you for reviving memories of those long gone days.Instead of rushing to charge gps batteries perhaps we might re-learn and rely on traditional ways of reading the wind to know where we are spacially. This current New Yorker article, Finding the Way Back, by M.R.O'Connor cites several such approaches.
The article talks about "analogue way-finding".
That's following the yellow arrows, is it? Works for me
I can normally get by with just one star, largely because I am a daytime walker. But whenever I leave the antipodes, it takes some time to get used to it being in the south!Navigating by the (field of) stars would be so apropos while on the Camino Frances.
Celestial navigation works, but it requires study and the acquisition of knowledge through effort and its about time sumbody came up wiv an app to sort it.
Exactly..
I really did not see the necessity of a GPS in the Camino Frances. And used paper map only inside the cities. There was a funny episode - we passed by two young girls a few times along the day, and all the times they were ALWAYS looking at the phone. At some point we asked if they had any problems, and they said 'the map was just not quite right'.
We told them to follow the trail and keep the sun at their backs all the time, because they were going West. Their faces were like interrogation marks. Then we assured them that any time they felt 'the map was not right', they should walk with the sun at their backs. We were actually surprised that it sounded like a big discovery to anyone... Well, no judgements. They didn't know that, but I probably don't know how to operate a GPS
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