How to depend on trees for navigation in survival
Navigation in the Environment
An excessive dependence on your GPS equipment might be a disadvantage in a survival situation. Devices may become misplaced or damaged. They may not be able to communicate with the three or more satellites required for locating if they are under a triple canopy or in bad weather.
Most importantly, given the lack of street names, being able to locate your location won’t assist you if you don’t have a context for the topographical markers in your immediate surroundings.
Prepare for these eventualities by bringing a compass, additional batteries, and a map as backup—as well as doing a thorough map study before heading out into the bush. Aim to get acquainted with the area within a fifteen- to twenty-mile radius of your final destination.
Having remembered the directions of landmarks such as lakes, towns, mountains, and seas can help you make better decisions on the fly if you have the misfortune of being disoriented.
The same may be said about a keen observer’s eye. Mother Nature, whether by purpose or by chance, gives people who pay attention with a plethora of hints as to their locations. Because the majority of the world’s winds blow from the west, for example, trees and plants tend to have greater foliage on their eastern sides.
The southern side of the tree is distinguished by a preponderance of branches (as opposed to leaves), which receives the greatest amount of sunlight as a result of the planet’s tilt. In addition, since moss prefers shade, moss development is often more prevalent on the northern side of trees.
This last hint is only useful in combination with the others since shade may be provided by nearby trees or plants. As with any hints, make sure you can discern an overall pattern before drawing any judgments about your cardinal directions.
Solar-powered navigation
Despite satellite monitoring, which has become ubiquitous in contemporary life, has only been around for about a half century, the usage of celestial objects as navigational aids has been used for thousands of years.
Providing you’ve done your research and equipped yourself with a basic working understanding of the surroundings, watching the motions of our nearest star, the sun, should be able to direct you toward a safe haven.
The most straightforward technique to make advantage of the sun’s motions is to figure out which direction your shadow is being thrown.
For this reason, the sun will throw your shadow to the west in the early morning since it will rise toward the east. After midday, as the sun is beginning to set in the west, your shadow will point in the direction of the eastern horizon.
Due to the high altitude of the sun, this approach will be difficult to employ around noon since the sun will not throw a significant shadow at all. While wearing an analog watch, you’ll have all of the tools you need to calculate your cardinal bearings if you’re using a digital watch (the direction of north, south, east, and west).
Rotate your body such that the hour hand is pointing straight toward the sun by raising your wrist as if you were gazing at your watch and rotating it. The direction of travel south is indicated by the midway point between the hour hand and the twelve o’clock mark on your watch.
Whenever you’re unclear of the time of day, you may make an improvised sundial and utilize the movement of your shadow to guide you on your journey. Build by placing a stick in the ground and placing a rock at the end of the shadow formed by the stick to complete the structure.
Once you have allowed fifteen minutes to pass, lay a second rock at one end of the new shadow.
Draw a line between the two rocks, and then another line perpendicular to the first line to connect them. The end of the perpendicular line that is farthest away from the stick will point in the direction of the north star.
How to depend on trees for navigation in survival
Navigation by the Stars
Any traveler should be able to discern cardinal directions, even in complete darkness, if they are guided by the ancient skill of celestial navigation—the star-gazing technique that has transported many sailors, pirates, and explorers to far-off lands and looted wealth.
And that’s excellent news for people who are traversing a scorching desert or escaping a tragedy, since traveling after nightfall may be necessary in certain situations.
Because of your latitude and longitude, the apparent location of the stars in the evening sky, as well as the selection of stars that will be visible to you, will depend on the season, the amount of cloud cover present, and the time of day.
The North Star is an excellent indicator of northerly heading in the northern hemisphere. Because the star is so close to the earth’s north pole, its position in the sky is practically imperceptible to changes in the weather. In accordance with the world’s rotation, other stars seem to move throughout the sky; but, since the earth spins like a top, the North Star stays fixed at the globe’s highest pole.
When looking for the North Star, keep in mind that it is not the brightest star in the sky. Instead, look for it by recognizing surrounding constellations such as the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, or Cassiopeia.
The star is in a direct line with the two outer stars of the Big Dipper’s bowl as shown opposite; using the distance between those two stars as a measuring stick, it is approximately five lengths away as well as with the central star or topmost point formed by the W in Cassiopeia (as shown opposite). Besides being the North Star, the Little Dipper’s handle also contains the final star, which is the Polaris star.
In the Southern Hemisphere, you may establish direction by looking for the Southern Cross, which is a star that is continuously visible near the southern pole. Imagine tracing an imaginary line through the constellation’s longest axis,
from the brightest star to the star directly opposite it; using the longest axis of the constellation’s cross as a measure, the southern pole is four-and-a-half lengths away, in the direction of the constellation’s brightest star, and the northern pole is four-and-a-half lengths away, in the direction of its brightest star.
Orion’s Belt may be seen near the equator. It is along the east-west line that the three horizontal stars that make up Orion’s belt are located; Orion’s body faces north, and his legs face south.
Magnetic Navigation is a kind of navigation that uses magnets.
It’s more than just a fun scientific experiment; a homemade compass may be a very helpful navigating aid. And, like many great improvised instruments, it’s constructed using materials that can be obtained from a number of readily accessible sources. Electric wire may be found in a variety of places, including radio speakers, flashlights, and the vehicle’s wiring harness.
Batteries may be found in an almost limitless number of electronic gadgets. In addition, everyone should have a roll of duct tape in the trunk of his or her car at all times. It truly just takes a little of luck or preparation to get a needle or a narrow piece of steel to complete the project.
An ordinary steel needle or piece of wire fencing may be magnetized with a few easy steps and used in the same way as store-bought compasses, which depend on magnetized needles that align themselves with the earth’s magnetic field, sometimes known as the “magnetosphere.” When an electric charge is applied to the needle, the ions in the needle will gather at one end, and when the needle is floating weightlessly, it will naturally point north-south.
There is one significant difference between the two versions in that store-bought compasses are correctly magnetized such that one of their needles aligns south and the other aligns north, as opposed to the homemade version. As a best practice, just one end of your needle should be magnetized; but, when dealing with such a tiny and thin gauge, this might be difficult to do successfully.
As a result, utilize your needle as a source of more general information to locate the axis that represents north and south in the coordinate system. You’ll need to validate which end is which by using another type of natural navigation in order to figure out which end is which.
It is important to note that the northern direction on a compass represents the earth’s northern magnetic pole, which is about one thousand miles south of true north, the earth’s geographical north pole, on the globe. When at all feasible, improvised compasses should be used in conjunction with maps, since they only offer a broad sense of direction.