Tristan Gooley's book The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs has the enchanting subtitle "Use outdoor clues to: find your way; predict the weather; locate water; track animals; and other forgotten skills". And it really does deliver on those promises!

Lost Art isn't summarizable – it's a semi-organized buffet of observations, methods, phenomena, rules, and connections. The main focus is mindful walking – paying attention and asking oneself questions about what one is sensing. Gooley explores Earth and sky, plants and animals, natural and artificial structures, and the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars. There are also safety tips, personal stories, and silly cynical asides. For instance, from the Introduction:

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. This is a theory I have experimented with over the years, as you will see.

In this book I will take the original approach of assuming that you are capable of walking safely and with roughly the right socks on. If you are the sort of person who likes to go ice-climbing in a nightie, then you probably don't read many walking books and I suspect it would take more than a book to mend your ways. With a handful of exceptions, my advice in the area of safety is three words long: don't be daft.

That said, everyone needs the right tools for certain jobs.

The Introduction concludes with a fine Executive Summary of the whole mission:

This is a book about outdoor clues and signs and the art of making predictions and deductions. The aim of the book is to make your walks, however long or short, eminently more fascinating. I hope you enjoy it.

A smörgåsbord of delight follows ...

_{(cf Weltschmertz Rx (2005-07-13), Seeing Nature (2005-07-19), Miracles and Wonders (2007-03-31), Mantra - Keep Looking (2017-05-30), ...) - ^z - 2023-09-03}