Navigating by Natural Landmarks

Back in the day when many people could not read and thus wasted little time with things like maps, travel was guided either by familiarity or directions that involved making a journey from one landmark to the next.  In cities, this could be done by referencing buildings and works of civil engineering.  In rural areas and the wilderness, however, travelers looked for things like massive trees, rock formations, bodies of water, and if they got really desperate, animal tracks and scats.  The native peoples of North America were amazing experts at the science of natural navigation, and they passed on this knowledge to mountain men and army scouts who in turn led settlers on to far away destinations.  In turn, some of the settlers would write to relatives looking to follow them, informing them of things they had seen along the way to guide them.

Others would go so far as to write and sell guide books with illustrations, supplemented by maps, of notable landmarks like Chimney Rock that could set the reader on the course to Oregon or California.  This became especially important out on the Great Plains where bluffs and rocks could keep travelers from wandering too far off the beaten path.  The rolling, easy expanses of grassland looked inviting compared to the cottonwood and ash thickets along the Platte River, an invitation that could easily lead to getting lost and out of site of the trail.  On the plains, one could easily backtrack, but further in along the mountains, landmarks that could serve as a mark of reassurance would prevent worse confusion that might find travelers confused in canyons, valleys, and thirsty deserts.  Even if the way back to the trail was made clear, valuable time would be lost wandering off course, which might result in becoming trapped in the higher elevations as winter snows overtook unwary travelers.

Scotts Bluff, western Nebraska, a famous landmark for travelers on the emigrant trails.

These days, despite the depressing lack of geographical knowledge retained by or even taught to most school students, people navigate by signage and reassurance shields posted along roads and highways.

Some people rely on a safe world of numbers even more by not being found on the road without their GPS devices, but I usually remind such people that it never hurts to have a basic knowledge of where you are and where you plan on heading.  Knowing the general lay of the land, including vegetation cover, possibilities in protruding geology, general directions of water drainage, and even typical patterns of climate need not be the sole province of editors at National Geographic.  People of previous centuries, with far less information at their fingertips, knew where they were based on something as seemingly mundane as a single boulder in the middle of a mountain valley.

A mere rock compared to the neighboring cliffs near El Morro, in New Mexico, but actually one of many landmarks guiding travelers heading toward the Arizona uplands.

Granted, people also moved a lot slower back then.  A day's travel might be reckoned in two dozen miles rather than the hundreds we have become accustomed to these days.  The significance of navigating by landmarks takes on a new meaning when this comes to mind, at any rate.  Compared to the majesty of the Grand Canyon or the Rocky Mountains, we might be more understood for overlooking something like the natural monuments along the Platte in Nebraska which end up being rest stops on the way to see the bigger and more impressive features, though we should hardly be excused.  The truth is, the entire journey becomes far more interesting in paying attention to the details encountered along the way.  Nature often rewards those willing to take a second look at the familiar and seemingly mundane, though it does little credit to us to consider our continent mundane, especially when our predecessors were so enthralled by the many things they saw as they explored more of their home.