Huth's 'The Lost Art of Finding Our Way': An odd and very enjoyable book

On my recent foray to New York City, I finished reading John Edward
Huth's The Lost Art of Finding Our Way. It is best described as an anthropological history of navigation,
written by a Harvard physicist.

In his chapter on
waves, he writes that, "there is almost a boundless amount of information
hidden in plain view, if only the meaning can be deciphered." In essence, he
argues that our ancestors often understood their world better than we do ours.
Today, he notes, many of us have our heads locked inside two-foot bubbles that
only communicate with other humans, most of them very similar to us. For
example, Eskimos, even when fogbound, know to look for the patterns winter
winds carve in the snow. If the prevailing winds are from the west, the lines
are likely to point on a north-south axis. Similarly, Pacific Islanders sailing
in the dark used to know to look into the ocean waters for the phosphorescent
trails left by large predatory fish, who swim toward islands at night.

There also are lots
of tidbits that I enjoyed. For example, I didn't know that Polaris, the North
Star, is far more important than it was several thousand years ago. In the time
of Homer, Huth writes, "Polaris was just a minor star that was 11 degrees away
from the Pole and inconsequential. There are few if any references to Polaris
in antiquity."

More broadly, the
use of stars in navigation did not come into its own, at least in the West,
until fairly recently. "A full realization of the power of celestial navigation
didn't emerge until the latter half of the 18th century," he writes. Nautical
twilight was the most important half-hour of the day for a ship at sea because
that was when the brighter stars began to emerge while the horizon was still
apparent, making it possible for a navigator to compare his dead reckoning
calculations against his celestial fixes, which in turn would tell him how much
current and leeway were affecting his vessel's movement.

He also offhandedly
notes that Oklahoma is North America's "tornado alley" because that is where
the dry, cool continental air mass tangles with the warm, wet maritime air
moving north from the Gulf of Mexico.

Huth is a refreshingly
clear writer. I love maps and charts. Just yesterday I sat down with a nautical
chart and for half an hour read it like it was a newspaper. I mention this
because I see "MLLW" on nautical charts all the time, and I knew that those
letters stand for "mean lower low water," but until I read his explanation I didn't
understand what it meant and how it differed from the "lowest astronomical
tide" used on British charts.

What does all this
have to do with defense or foreign policy? I am not sure, but I feel it belongs
here in this blog because it is about how we orient ourselves to the world
around us. And writing about it is more fun that mourning the erosion of the First
and Fourth Amendments.