The Nature Instinct

“A captivating guide to finding one’s way in the wild.”—The Wall Street Journal

The culmination of everything Tristan Gooley, New York Times-bestselling author of How to Read a Tree and The Lost Art of Reading Nature’s Signs, has written so far: How to take what you learn about the outdoors—and make it second nature

Readers of master outdoorsman Tristan Gooley have learned that the world is filled with clues to look for—we can use the Big Dipper to tell time, for example, and a budding flower to find south. But what about the innate survival instincts that told Gooley to move on one night, just as he was about to make camp? Everything looked perfect, but something felt wrong. When Gooley returned to his abandoned campsite to search for clues, there they were: All of the tree trunks were slightly bent. The ground had already shifted once in a storm—and could easily shift again, becoming treacherous in heavy rain.

The Nature Instinct shows us how Gooley and other expert observers—from hunters in the English countryside to the Pygmy people in the Congo—have recovered and rekindled this lost “sixth sense;” a subconscious, deeper understanding of our surroundings. By training ourselves through slow, careful observation, we too can unlock this kind of intuition—for finding the forest’s edge when deep in the woods, or knowing when a wild animal might pose danger—without even having to stop to think about it.

Publisher's note: The Nature Instinct was published in the UK under the title Wild Signs and Star Paths.