concept

Wayfinding

The Polynesian and Micronesian tradition of open-ocean navigation carried out with no instruments at all: a sidereal star compass that divides the horizon into houses by the rising and setting points of memorised stars, the etak moving-reference system that tracks position by imagining the reference island drifting past those star houses, and swell patterns and seabird behaviour to find land beyond the horizon. One thing must be said plainly: this is a trained, rigorous, quantitative discipline, transmitted through years of apprenticeship and through mnemonic chant — not intuition, and certainly not luck.