The Essential Wilderness Navigator (Ragged Mountain Press essential series on outdoor pursuits) [Paperback]

David Seidman (Author), Christine Erikson (Illustrator)

Book Description

Series: Ragged Mountain Press essential series on outdoor pursuits | Publication Date: June 1995

This guide gives the reader information on how to find their way through any outdoor environment. It starts with map and compass use and offers special techniques for desert, mountain, forest and winter path finding. Exercises are included to help develop a sense of spatial awareness.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Maps and a compass are the hiker's insurance against getting lost in the woods. But you'll need to be able to do more with these tools than locate Fresno or head south. Seidman, a world traveler and master kayaker, charts the subtleties of map interpretation (especially the ups and downs of contour lines) and offers instruction on how to use a compass for taking bearings and walking a course. Other techniques for finding your way in the woods are explained: estimating distances by finger angles or winking, adjusting your compass for true north, and finding directions from the motions of the sun and stars. By the way, forget about moss growing on the north side of trees; lichens like moisture, which more often depends on prevailing winds and weather than direction. This book is filled with illustrations and practical advice to keep the careful trekker on the right path. Even armchair travelers will find some valuable advice here. Jennifer Henderson

From the Back Cover

The Essential Series--Your Trusted Guides

"Puts the world of wilderness navigation in the palm of your hand."--Adventure West

"Teaches the essential disciplines of compass and map-reading . . . but goes beyond the basics with useful, eye-opening advice on how to read nature's highway signs--vegetation bands, wind-whipped ripples in sand or snow, and the positions of the sun and stars."--Northeast Outdoors

If you're at all unsure of your backwoods direction-finding skills, The Essential Wilderness Navigator is the guide you've been looking for. It teaches you how to observe--to see, smell, hear, and sense the details of the environment around you. Then, to supplement your newly enhanced sense of direction, you'll learn to read maps, use a compass, and find your location and route with reference to landmarks. This updated second edition also includes

• The basics of global positioning system (GPS) navigation and CD-ROM maps
• A full-color section on reading topographical maps
• Navigating in deserts, mountains, and snow

Whether you're planning an extended wilderness trek or a day hike on marked trails, here's how to stay found. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill (June 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0070563233
• ISBN-13: 978-0070563230
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #192,951 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #75 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Survival Skills

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

139 of 140 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Map and Compass Instruction Book, December 3, 2004

By 

Peter - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Essential Wilderness Navigator: How to Find Your Way in the Great Outdoors, Second Edition (Paperback)

You want to learn how to use a map and compass? For hiking or backpacking, especially remote wilderness? This is the best comprehensive book I've found on the subject, bar none. Reasons:

1. It gets to the point quickly in teaching you map & compass fundamentals. No fluff, no wasted time on esoteric principles of magnetism or the rules of orienteering competitions (a fine sport, but one bearing little resemblance to actual wilderness navigation with its special large-scale magnetic-north maps and simplified compasses etc.) Instead, this book concentrates on one objective: accurate land navigation in a wilderness environment.

2. It teaches realistic methods, and does not emphasize the unrealistic ones (one glaring example: penciling a lot of inaccurate magnetic declination lines all over your map the night before your trip (because the author used the method once for an adventure race with a special large-scale map and thinks it's cool) instead of just buying a compass with adjustable declination or pasting a pointer indicating a true bearing on your compass baseplate! Hey, sitting atop a windblown mountain is no place to attempt to draw magnetic lines of declination with a three-inch compass baseplate when you walk off your pre-marked map or have to use a friend's copy!

3. It has large, clear, easy-to-follow illustrations. Believe me, this is a rarity in most map/compass books.

4. It teaches BOTH compass dead reckoning (compass only) AND terrain association (map priority) navigation principles and shows the advantages and weaknesses of each in a given situation. Some orienteering-biased books would have you believe the compass is only good for aligning a map to magnetic north!

5. It has nice large pages and lies flat while you refer to various sections and practice using your map & compass in the field. Don't laugh. Remember, you will learn land navigation by practicing outdoors what you're reading. One session of trying to refer to the tiny pocket paperback pages and dingy photos of competing books will make you a believer in a large-paged instruction book with clear illustrations.

6. It covers more advanced map/compass skills (resection, finding position from a baseline and landmark, etc.) as well as beginner exercises, and does so in the same clear, practical way without excessive verbiage or attempts to be clever. One competing book spent 3 entire pages on how to use a 1902 compass design!

7. It warns you of the great inaccuracies of some improvised 'navigational' methods (like telling directions from a wristwatch and the sun) while still giving you useful information on finding direction from Polaris and other methods that do work well enough for emergency navigation.

8. While it has the mandatory chapter on GPS and the development of computer-generated waypoints, it does not attempt to be a 'all-method navigation' book. Such a book does not exist. Either the GPS material will be inadequate (because no general GPS book can cover each model of GPS and their widely varying operational characteristics in different outdoor environments) or the map/compass material is too abbreviated. Learn to use a map & compass before all else - this book makes it simple.

63 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The best resource for beginning or experienced pathfinders, October 27, 1999

By 

Doug Kyle ([e-mail]) (West Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Essential Wilderness Navigator (Ragged Mountain Press essential series on outdoor pursuits) (Paperback)

This book is the best resource on land navigation i've seen. I use it regularly in teaching land navigation in conjunction with search and rescue to area fire departments. The author makes the hard-to-explain easy to understand for beginners and experts alike.

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential to using a compass, December 8, 2007

By 

Navigator - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Essential Wilderness Navigator: How to Find Your Way in the Great Outdoors, Second Edition (Paperback)

I have been using a compass for many years but I always thought there was much more than I knew. I went to using GPS for all my navigation a few years ago. I purchased 3 books on compass usage a couple years ago after my wife and I broke my GPS during a snowstorm in the mountains of Colorado leaving us in a bad mess.
I quickly ran through the other 2, and although they were good they were not as complete as this one. I have carried it with me for 2 years now. I find that what I think I have learned is easily wrong when out in the field so I now carry it with me and practice the stuff I am unsure of. Some people think this book is wordy but I find it fascinating. I reread certain chapters over and over, finding I have glossed over something that is more important than I originally thought.
If you want to trust a compass this is the book for you, but plan on spending some time with it.
I am buying this book for my son-in law as he relies exclusively on a GPS.
I guess the only thing I disagree with is a statement that a compass almost never breaks, as I have several that have been retired over breakage. I carry 2-3 with me now as I guess I'm not disposed to trust any one navigational instrument.