BTW - anyone wondering why the woman from Hawai'i didn't jump right in with a fascinating essay about Polynesian wayfinding?
Well, it's because the woman from Hawai'i finds Polynesian wayfinding to be a bit of a Big Topic for what is basically a lightweight hobby blog.
Right, enough with the third person. I did think about it for about a split second, but it's really one of those topics that always leaves me feeling a bit overwhelmed.
However, I was, for a bit, thinking to figure out whether I might want to at least refer to the Pacific Triangle angle in the Paddling Blind post. In the end I decided to just focus on the paddling-blind exercise, but I did go back and look at the Marshall Island stick chart post I'd put up last year. That had actually ended up being a surprisingly interesting post for me - I'd really just chucked it out because I was reminded of the stick charts by a lovely little Inuit carved coastal map posted on the Kayak Yak blog. I thought people might find it interesting but I really had no idea just how novel an object this would be. The discussion that ensued was a great one (Tristan Gooley even stopped by!) and although I'm a little shy about tackling a topic as big as Polynesian celestial navigation, somebody asked me a direct question that was enough to get me going about the education of Nainoa Thompson. That comment really wasn't bad, practically could have been a stand-alone post.
The lambs-as-navigational-hazards post that I mentioned as one of the other entries was a repost from Captain JP, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, so if you don't mind, I'm going to follow his lead and send you on another trip in the Wayback Machine.
4 comments:
As you might imagine, there is quite a lot in Tristan's book about the natural navigational techniques used by the Polynesians, including a drawing of this actual chart.
I used to sell replicas of these in my shop - Pacific Islands Trading Post - on Maui, back in the late 70's. The ancient navigators of the Pacific were the best in the world for many centuries.
They were indeed. That's kind of why I didn't try to write about them - you can't really just chug out a post about that level of accomplishment without actually taking time to do proper research.
I've got enough free time right now to chug out a post about a personal experience - not enough to do the research I would want to do to produce a decent essay about Polynesian wayfinding.
I haven't got the book yet (er, just in case anyone was wondering if I did or not), but I'm glad to hear that he covered the navigators of the Pacific Triangle. You could have a good book without them, I suppose, but at least in the eyes of this island-raised paddler, it would be somehow incomplete!
It's a great picture that one, so good to see a re-post of that story.
I'm reading a book that covers the polynesian navigational methods and I might blog a review.... though I'm slightly worried that another navigation post upset Tillerman a bit.
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