The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs

By: Tristan Gooley

Narrated by: Jeff Harding

Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's Summary

The ultimate guide to what the land, sun, moon, stars, trees, plants, animals, sky and clouds can reveal - when you know what to look for. 

Includes over 850 outdoor clues and signs. 

This top 10 best seller is the result of Tristan Gooley's two decades of pioneering outdoors experience and six years of instructing, researching and writing. It includes lots of outdoor clues and signs that will not be found in any other book in the world. 

As well as the most comprehensive guide to natural navigation for walkers ever compiled, it also contains clues for weather forecasting, tracking, city walks, coast walks, night walks and dozens of other areas. 

©2014 Tristan Gooley (P)2019 Bolinda Publishing

not quite

As the book's topic is very interesting to me, i was disappointed to find several problems that led me to abandon (or at least take a break from it in favor of another book). The clues for reading nature, in some cases clearly universal, but I found that in this telling the clues to a large extent a regional analysis germane to the English countryside. Also, it makes several references to charts or graphs that are not available via pdf files (at least that I could find). Finally, the book includes no chapter titles thus precluding hopping around to select chapters that might have more interest for me.

One example of the problem is the implicit assumption that the southern side of a hill always has the more abundant green life. That is less often true in hot dry climates at lower latitudes when the blistering exposure to an unrelenting sun often favors more green growth on the less dessicating north side of a hill. There seemed a bias toward signs in nature when in a wet and windy deciduous forest. The author is clearly an expert in his topic and very engaging when describing more universal signs. If this book's content strikes a chord in you i suggest get a hard copy to supplement the audible version.

As a final note, I selected this book based on the title and synopsis alone shortly after it was released; I did not have the benefit of reviews from other readers. The reader seems to be a native US English speaker and while his diction is clear and easily followed, the rendering was dull, possibly missing points of emphasis in the written version.