Tristan Gooley > Quotes

“It should be expected that we will find wonder in a vast mountain landscape, but it is a more serious challenge to find wonder in a hill. It is a great achievement to find it in a molehill.”
― Tristan Gooley, How to Connect with Nature

“As I discovered a few years ago, once you learn that you can measure the size of raindrops by looking at the colors in a rainbow—the more red, the bigger the drops”
― Tristan Gooley, How to Read Water: Clues and Patterns from Puddles to the Sea

“Sadly, the natural world is not short of people who believe that rattling off Latin names incessantly makes them appear clever, whereas most of us know instinctively that this suggests insecurity at best, but possibly social and sexual dysfunction as well. If somebody corrects you sternly by using an obtuse name for something, they probably know neither human nature nor any other kind very profoundly.”
― Tristan Gooley, How to Connect with Nature

“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water.”
― Tristan Gooley, How to Read Water: Clues and Patterns from Puddles to the Sea

“I was one of the many millions to misunderstand what is wild. I have read authors’ definitions of “wild” as any place you can walk for a week witthout meeting a road or fence. But I think that is a narrow view, a consumer view, a transactional perspective that expects a landscape to give us the sense of wilderness in return for our travel. It is one I subscribed to for many years, which is partly why I found myself in those places, but now I see it as lazy. A sense of wild is engendered by awareness, a sense of connection with and deep understanding of any landscape. The pavement of any city side street wriggles with enough life to terrify and delight us if we choose to immerse ourselves in it”
― Tristan Gooley, The Nature Instinct: Relearning Our Lost Intuition for the Inner Workings of the Natural World

“Most of the walking books I have come across over the years get bogged down in obsessive attention to safety and equipment. I have rarely found myself enjoying these books, because I do not go walking with the purpose of staying within a world of perfect safety and comfort. Personally, I would rather die walking than die of boredom reading about how to walk safely.”
― Tristan Gooley, The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs: Use Outdoor Clues to Find Your Way, Predict the Weather, Locate Water, Track Animals-and Other Forgotten Skills

“There comes a moment when these basic activities allow us to meet our ancestors briefly. Glancing past some nettles, we catch a glimpse of their hairy faces smiling back at us and grunting something to the effect of, “We might have been savages, but we weren’t idiots,” before they slope off to settle a mild dispute by clubbing someone to death. Fortunately, we can enjoy the best of both worlds: It is possible to revel in the satisfaction of fundamental activities without the need to witness blunt trauma.”
― Tristan Gooley, How to Read Nature: Awaken Your Senses to the Outdoors You've Never Noticed

“Personally, I would rather die walking than die of boredom reading about how to walk safely.”
― Tristan Gooley, The Walker's Guide to Outdoor Clues and Signs

“Our current perspective will influence our sense of everything else. For this reason, never look at something that is moving if balance is critical.”
― Tristan Gooley, The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs: Use Outdoor Clues to Find Your Way, Predict the Weather, Locate Water, Track Animals-and Other Forgotten Skills

“I was one of the many millions to misunderstand what is wild. I have read authors’ definitions of “wild” as any place you can walk for a week without meeting a road or fence. But I think that is a narrow view, a consumer view, a transactional perspective that expects a landscape to give us the sense of wilderness in return for our travel. It is one I subscribed to for many years, which is partly why I found myself in those places, but now I see it as lazy. A sense of wild is engendered by awareness, a sense of connection with and deep understanding of any landscape. The pavement of any city side street wriggles with enough life to terrify and delight us if we choose to immerse ourselves in it”
― Tristan Gooley, The Nature Instinct: Relearning Our Lost Intuition for the Inner Workings of the Natural World

“A combination of humility and aspiration is a trait found in the most interesting of people. Those who choose to reside purely in the practical or philosophical world tend to scorn the land that lies between these two areas, the natural world. But those rare individuals who do things that change the way we think, or think in a way that changes how we behave, have, without exception, understood the insight that reading nature can offer.”
― Tristan Gooley, How to Read Nature: Awaken Your Senses to the Outdoors You’ve Never Noticed

“At its core, geography is the local study of change.” --- Rita Gardner”
― Tristan Gooley, How to Read a Tree: Clues and Patterns from Bark to Leaves

“WE WILL ALL develop a sudden interest in natural medicine if it promises a cure for a problem that is otherwise hard to tackle. The same children who recognize a stinging nettle so easily because of its painful effects learn their first natural medicine in the form of the dock leaf that can be rubbed on stings to make them less painful. Dock leaves do contain an antihistamine that may help soothe the sting, but the efficacy of this is still debated by scientists. The same scientists who are happy to refute the value of a dock leaf indoors are probably as likely as any of us to reach for one when stung outdoors. That is the difference between empirical knowledge and painful ankles.”
― Tristan Gooley, How to Read Nature: Awaken Your Senses to the Outdoors You've Never Noticed

“Every morning I try to take in the skyscape, the upper and lower clouds, and the winds that are carrying them, as well as any dew, frost, mist, or other signs.”
― Tristan Gooley, The Secret World of Weather: How to Read Signs in Every Cloud, Breeze, Hill, Street, Plant, Animal, and Dewdrop

“Once we have trained ourselves to become observant, only then can we enjoy the bigger game of deduction. This may start with broad observations”
― Tristan Gooley, The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs: Use Outdoor Clues to Find Your Way, Predict the Weather, Locate Water, Track Animals-and Other Forgotten Skills

“Evolution is the sadistic headmaster of the Succeed-or-Die School of Invention, motto: Disce aut consumere!—“learn or get eaten!” It is sad and sometimes ugly when a species fails in this school, especially ugly if the change they are confronted with is caused by human thoughtlessness. Sometimes the two happen in tandem and ugliness can create unexpected beauty. New railway lines are notorious for the havoc and destruction they can bring to a landscape, impacting both natural and artificial environments. However, the need to keep general human traffic away from the iron dragons that pass along these new lines has created a new habitat and led to a renaissance in rare wildflowers in some areas. But perhaps the most surreal and ironic example of this is the fact that many naturalists now support the military’s habit of firing big explosive shells at landscapes. Exploding ordnance falling from the sky has the dependable effect of keeping humans away and, consequently, firing ranges have accidentally created some of the most healthy ecosystems in Britain. Naturalists and the military are now working more closely, and this unlikely partnership is becoming less accidental and more deliberate.”
― Tristan Gooley, How to Read Nature: Awaken Your Senses to the Outdoors You've Never Noticed

“Conifers evolved before broadleaves and have a simpler structure, which can be seen in the grain. Conifer stumps tend to rot from the outside inward, broadleaves from the inside outward. Cedars are the conifer exception: They rot from the inside.”
― Tristan Gooley, How to Read a Tree: Clues and Patterns from Bark to Leaves

“Monopodial trees Most conifers Beech Holly Ash Prunus family, including cherry Dogwood Sympodial trees Plane Oak Maple Birch Elm Linden Sycamore Willow”
― Tristan Gooley, How to Read a Tree: Clues and Patterns from Bark to Leaves

“The formal name for straight branch growth is “monopodial” and for the zigzag effect, “sympodial.” Beeches are monopodial and so are most conifers. Oaks are sympodial.”
― Tristan Gooley, How to Read a Tree: Clues and Patterns from Bark to Leaves

“And if you know something, then maybe you are worth something.”
― Tristan Gooley, How to Read Water: Clues and Patterns from Puddles to the Sea

“The sound of your weeping will not slow the growth of the forest.”
― Tristan Gooley

“Blue tits fly more steeply upward away from attacks that come in from the side than from above.”
― Tristan Gooley, The Nature Instinct: Relearning Our Sixth Sense for the Inner Workings of the Natural World

“Poplars, cherries, and oaks have leaves and branches that alternate. Maples and ashes have opposing leaves and branches.”
― Tristan Gooley, How to Read a Tree: Clues and Patterns from Bark to Leaves

“then don’t look at the moving water—it makes balancing almost impossible.”
― Tristan Gooley, The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs: Use Outdoor Clues to Find Your Way, Predict the Weather, Locate Water, Track Animals-and Other Forgotten Skills

“Notice how the further away things are, the lighter they appear. The nearest hill is noticeably darker than the one behind it, and the one behind that appears lighter still, all the way to the horizon”
― Tristan Gooley, The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs: Use Outdoor Clues to Find Your Way, Predict the Weather, Locate Water, Track Animals-and Other Forgotten Skills

“There is a feeling of trespass when you know none of the dead in a graveyard.”
― Tristan Gooley, How to Read a Tree: Clues and Patterns from Bark to Leaves

“This is what the great artists manage. They flatter us, by observing better than others and then speaking to each of us as individuals and in a language that we worry we may be the only ones left caring for.”
― Tristan Gooley, How To Read Water

“Rain churns up plant oils into the atmosphere and activates the actinomycetes bacteria in the soil, and this is part of that unique smell of rain on dry ground we come to know so well. If rain falls after a long dry spell, it generates a particularly strong scent known as “petrichor.”
― Tristan Gooley, How to Read Water: Clues and Patterns from Puddles to the Sea

“If you ever need to walk across something narrow, say, a fallen tree that crosses a stream or river,”
― Tristan Gooley, The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs: Use Outdoor Clues to Find Your Way, Predict the Weather, Locate Water, Track Animals-and Other Forgotten Skills

“Weather, whether it is kind or causing trouble, shapes who we are and has done so from the beginning.”
― Tristan Gooley, The Secret World of Weather