What is lost when modern technology substitutes for our innate capacity to find our way? Could you navigate out of a dense bank of fog or an unfamiliar forest using only environmental clues and simple instruments?
Long before GPS, Google Earth, and global transit, humans traveled vast distances, navigating by natural phenomena, but few could do so today without technology.
Spurred by a haunting tragedy, John Edward Huth began a self-imposed study of way-finding which culminated in his book, The Lost Art of Finding Our Way.
In this Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University lecture, to be held Monday, November 18 from 7 – 8:30 in the Hunnewell Building, 125 Arborway, Jamaica Plain, John will put us in the shoes, ships, and sleds of early navigators for whom paying close attention to the environment around them was, quite literally, a matter of life and death. $10 fee, free for Arnold Arboretum members and students. To register online, visit https://my.arboretum.harvard.edu/Info.aspx?DayPlanner=1259&DayPlannerDate=11/18/2013.
