Wayfinding

Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World
M. R. O’Connor
St. Martin’s Press (April 30, 2019), 354 pages
Kindle edition $14.99, Amazon hardcover $22.29

These days we take for granted access to GPS navigation, whether with a GPS device or, more likely, via the Google Maps or Apple Maps app on our iPhone or Android smart phone. Of course all of us have experienced the reality that these tools often do not select the optimal route to our destination. The interim rector at my church a few years ago did not know our area. He was going to a diocesan conference in a city on the other side of the mountain in the desert. Had he asked anyone in the congregation they would have told him to simply take state Highway 79 to Interstate 10, drive through the pass, and shortly after exiting the freeway he would be there. Instead, he relied on his GPS app which took him on the two-lane Highway 74 up the mountain and down the other side. Definitely not the most direct nor the easiest route.

In her book Wayfinding M.R. O’Conner investigates how humans navigate not only without a GPS, but without a traditional compass or sextant. She begins by investigating the Inuit people in the Arctic. This was a particularly good place to start because in that region people don’t even have the stars for navigation throughout the summer. In winter the sun is of little use since it is always below the horizon. Instead people use both the subtle clues they know how to find in the flat, white landscape and their own innate sense of direction.

O’Conner also discusses how animals find their way about. On her visit to the Arctic she learns that sled dogs too have an innate sense of direction. They can get their driver home in whiteout weather conditions with minimal effort. O’Conner describes how migratory birds seem to use the hippocampus portion of their brain as a navigational tool.

The author visits Aboriginal people in Australia to learn how they navigate the outback using dreamtime. She meets Pacific islanders to find out how they navigate the ocean. During these travels she discovers how colonization has done considerable damage to such cultures and their ability to use their traditional methods of navigation.

Near the end of the book she discusses GPS and its limitations. She quotes one arctic native who describes how GPS would have taken a rescue team via a dangerous route over thin ice (literally) while his innate navigation skills got them to their destination in safety.

The book was published in 2019, but I do wonder when it was written. O’Conner states, “The race to fill the world’s roads with driverless cars is well underway. Some ten million are predicted to be in use by 2020.” Obviously, one year past that mark we are nowhere near that number. But that is a minor complaint about what is a fascinating and readable book.

Wayfinding is a reminder that technology is not always the best solution.

Travels with Herodotus

Travels with Herodotus
Ryszard Kapuscinski
translated by Klara Glowczewska
Vintage (November 11, 2009), 290 pages
originally published in Polish in 2004
Kindle edition $12.99

My acquaintance with Herodotus goes back a long way. His book The Histories was assigned reading for my Ancient Greece and the Near East class during the first semester of my freshman year at Pitzer College in the fall of 1971. I have revisited Herodotus periodically since then, so it intrigued me when I came across a mention of this book.

Herodotus, you likely know, was from the Greek city state of Halicarnassus in Asia Minor. Born around 484 BCE, he traveled much of the known world and collected stories about the people and cultures of his time. Although his primary interest, he asserts, is the cause of the wars between the Persians and the Greeks, he wanders off into many diversions. Apparently he made a living and financed his travels by giving public readings, but we are fortunate that a written version of his work has survived. (The word “history,” by the way, as Herodotus uses it is closer to the sense of “inquiry” than how we commonly use the word.)

Ryszard Kapuscinski was a college student in Poland as World War II was ending and was fortunate to have a professor who taught Herodotus. He got a job at a newspaper in Warsaw and was sent to India as a correspondent. His boss gave him a copy of a Polish translation of The Histories before his departure. Never mind that Herodotus never went to India or wrote about it. Both Herodotus and Kapuscinski were travelers.

Kapuscinski’s employer had an interesting approach to his work as a correspondent. It was essentially, “Send us dispatches about whatever you find that is worth reporting.” He was pretty much left on his own. After India the newspaper sent him to China as part of a planned exchange between the two Communist countries. They recalled him after a shakeup at the newspaper for apparently improper political views. He thought it best to move on and went to work for the Polish Press Agency where he spent several decades. Kapuscinski spent a lot of time in Africa and was in Iran when the revolution overthrew shah.

Throughout his travels Kapuscinski kept his copy of The Histories with him and interweaves tales of his own activities with reflections of Herodotus and how he viewed the world. Kapuscinski points out that Herodotus repeated unlikely stories he had heard, though often expressing doubt about their veracity.

Rather than having quotes from Herodotus translated from Greek to Polish to English, the publisher received permission from Oxford University Press to quote their translation of The Histories by Robin Waterfield. The words of Herodotus are in italic, and so are easily distinguished from those of Kapuscinski.

The writing in Travels with Herodotus is lucid, clear, and flows smoothly. I know nothing of Polish or of how Kapuscinski’s writing might flow in that language, but Klara Glowczewska’s translation is nicely polished, and it’s a pleasure to read her sentences.

Travels with Herodotus, though not a new book, will engage the interest of both those interested in ancient Greek history and the person who enjoys the Paul Theroux-style travel narrative.

In Praise of Paths

In Praise of Paths: Walking through Time and Nature
Torbjørn Ekelund
translated by Becky L. Crook
Greystone Books (May 5, 2020), 175 pages
Kindle edition $11.99, Amazon hardcover $17.39

After a mishap one day, the author found himself in the hospital with a diagnosis of epilepsy. Under Norwegian law that meant he had to give up his driver’s license. So he turned his thoughts to walking.

Not that he hadn’t been walking before. He tells of his childhood and visits to the rural family cabin, where there was lots of walking to do. But after his diagnosis he really got serious about walking. He had a friend with whom he plotted walking adventures. One trip took them to a protected wilderness area just outside their hometown of Oslo. For some reason they chose to see how they might get along without maps or GPS, only following the sun. They found out that they weren’t as savvy as they thought they were.

Ekelund distinguishes between walking and running. He writes:

A person who walks slowly sees much, and a person who walks quickly sees little. A person who is running as quickly as possible has their attention focused on their own body. Whereas the attention of a person walking slowly is aimed away from themselves, toward the world and everything outside.

He points out that for Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Darwin, Søren Kierkegaard, and Virginia Woolf walking was a creative catalyst.

Ekelund does commit a sort of literary heresy within the canon of fantasy literature. He conflates The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He refers to The Lord of the Rings and says that it has the subtitle There and Back Again. He talks writes about how Bilbo returns home, the ring destroyed, to his normal life. There and Back Again is, of course, the subtitle of The Hobbit, not The Lord of the Rings. And it is Frodo, Bilbo’s nephew, in The Lord of the Rings whose adventures center on that ring of power. While Bilbo returns home after his adventures to his normal life, the Shire is not the same for Frodo and his company after the ring is destroyed. In fact, even humble Frodo is unwilling to give up the ring in the end and has to lose a finger in order for the ring to be destroyed. You may recall that the destruction of the ring meant the end of the Third Age of Middle Earth. Things were not the same. A quick reference check on Ekelund’s part could have allowed him to avoid this embarrassing confusion.

In Praise of Paths, however, evoked much in my own experience, so I can accept the Rings error. When we lived in Gilroy Terry and I used to go hiking at Uvas Canyon County Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains. (They’re actually hills, but that is the name of the range.) The book brought back memories of that magical spot. The park is a marvelous place with natural springs and streams. To get there you have to drive through a private Swedish community called Sveadal, a place where people live a much simpler lifestyle than in the Silicon Valley communities below.

Near the end of the book Ekelund writes about returning as an adult to see the mountain behind his grandparents’ property that he knew growing up. I grew up beneath the shadow of Mt. San Jacinto, as is obvious from this blog’s header images. When Terry and I bought our house here in Hemet in 2015 we discovered that we have an unobstructed view of the mountain from our front yard. That was a marvelous bonus as I returned to my hometown after forty-one years away.

In Praise of Paths is enjoyable reading. It certainly resonated with me.

The Anthropocene Reviewed

The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
John Green
Dutton (May 18, 2021), 302 pages
Kindle edition $14.99, Amazon hardcover $16.80

I had seen this book pop up in several contexts, and my initial thought was that the title was somewhat arrogant. How could one be so bold as to review the geological era of human existence? The title got so many favorable notices, however, that I decided to give it a go. There is no arrogance here, in fact. John Green is a modest fellow in these essays.

Green writes on several topics, many of them autobiographical. He talks candidly about his own physical and mental challenges. He discusses his work at the trade publication Booklist and his time as a student chaplain at a children’s hospital. Seems he had plans to attend seminary for the Episcopal priesthood, something he abandoned. He talks about his childhood and admits to being an odd kid. He writes about living in Indianapolis and attending the annual auto race. (Did you know that Speedway, IN is a separate legal entity within Indianapolis? He compares it to the Vatican and Rome.)

Green is best known for his fiction, including the young adult novel Turtles All the Way Down and The Fault in Our Stars, which became a popular movie. He comes from a younger generation compared to me. His favorite musical artists are The Mountain Goats and Will Oldham. I had heard of neither act until reading this book. But then my musical taste is stuck in the 1970s, as it has been for decades.

The Anthropocene Reviewed is pleasant reading. I saw that it has appeared in the New York Times nonfiction print bestseller list one week, but not on the combined print and e-book list. That makes sense. The book would make for good beach or poolside reading. And Green, well, I would enjoy having him over for dinner.