Wild Signs and Star Paths: Key #9, The Pink Compass

[kylec]

This series is an exploration of the works of Tristan Gooley. I’ll document my efforts to learn to read nature’s signs. If you enjoy reading, I encourage you to support the author by purchasing a copy of Wild Sings and Star Paths (UK) or The Nature Instinct (US). I’m in no way affiliated with the author, nor do I profit from sales of the book.

Last Week’s Work

To observe the ramp—the way the wind shapes everything from sand to snow to rock in a series of ramps with a shallow windward side and a precipitous lee.

New World

I failed to observe this sign, but I’ve seen it many times on other occasions. It’s one of the easier signs to spot, and can be found in any medium that the wind has the time and power to shape. That mean a gentle breeze can form little ramps in dry sand, and a fierce prevailing wind can shape rock. I imagine if we could see the great dunes of the Sahara on a time lapse, we would see that these ramps move forward like waves, as a little debris from the bottom rolls up and slides over the edge. The greater the size and more enduring the material, the stronger and more consistent the wind. That means a small ramp effect could form in parking lot dust, but it may be of little use for getting your bearings, as the win will change soon.

Knowing the direction of the prevailing wind of an area means that you can use the ramp to tell direction even when the wind is dead, or blowing from an unusual place. The sun is the preferred guide, but it doesn’t always show its face. Ramps are there in all conditions. They only require a small piece of knowledge to orient us. But Tristan Gooley emphasizes that when we use the direction of a ramp to see that we are bearing north, across a southwest prevailing wind, that we are performing an act of calculation. These directions are just words, an the purpose of the book is to regain a sixth sense that orients us to the world before words ever enter our minds.

He notes that the ramp doesn’t help us find direction—it is direction. There is no need to bind it to an abstraction. Even if we have no clue which cardinal direction the wind that formed these little dunes came from, we can see how they relate to everything else before our senses, and find our way hither and thither.

The ramp is just a name for one of the ways that prevailing forces shape our landscape. Strong effects linger in the absence of that force, and can take a long time to vanish before the next force. Seen as a concept, we can apply it to a vast number of other signs, and even find our own creative forces that leave impressions in their absence. They may not give us a compass point, but we can tell from which direction the forces that shape our lives came, which way they went, and how powerful they were. Knowing this allows us to walk any course we like while keeping our bearings to the past.

Key #9: The Pink Compass

The low rising and setting sun reflects off of tree tops and clouds, often causing them to glow pink even when we don’t see the sun itself. Just as our shadow at noon gives us north, these beautiful glimmers add to the ways we can find ourselves in the landscape. The brightest spots are those closest the sun. At dawn and dusk, I’ll look up to notice how the color gradient points back to the sun.