The Essential Wilderness Navigator by David Seidman & Paul Cleveland

Author:David Seidman & Paul Cleveland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 2001-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

Follow the illustrations on page 90 for a declination-adjusted compass. You should see the landmark on the prescribed bearing.

Navigation was a matter of dead reckoning, so many hours at so many miles per hour. The eye was of small assistance. Each esker looked like the last, and each clump of stunted spruce or each rock. Darkness set in shortly after noon. It was not the darkness of night, but rather of a long-extended twilight. The sun not far below the horizon and the extreme whiteness of everything lent fair visibility, but so blurred the outlines of distant knolls as to render them more alike than ever.

—Malcolm Waldron, Snow Man

Perfect

The most fluid navigational experience I’ve ever had was on a canoe trip to the Ten Thousand Islands chain in Florida’s Everglades National Park. That corner of the park is a maze of mangroves and channels. Knowing exactly where you are is critical because all the mangroves do look the same.

While still on the beach in Chockolosky Bay, the outfitter who rented my wife and me our canoe gave us some local beta. We loaded up and shoved off.

Crossing the bay, I realized I had better keep my map and compass out where I could easily refer to them. Laying the map on top of the small cooler we brought and putting the compass on top was perfect—as I paddled, I could see my bearing and stay on it. It was as if the canoe was a bearing needle. I would point to where we wanted to go and that was it—no mountains or canyons in the way.

As we started into the maze of mangroves, I had already become familiar with landmarks, such as they were. Each turn correlated to the map as we paddled across the brackish black water. The channels snaked around and opened into larger waterways, then broke off into a dozen smaller channels. I kept the canoe on my bearings. That evening, which just happened to be Thanksgiving Day, my wife and I ate a turkey breast, stuffing, and cranberries out on a chickee, a little platform sitting above the swamp. Just don’t ask my wife about the ‘gators, because that’s a whole other story.

PJC

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