Wilderness

In message <[email hidden]>, Dave N
<[email hidden]> writes

Quoted message said:

I've just come across the following article, on the BBC web site, which
I found interesting and evocative. It brought to mind the comparatively
benign nature of wilderness in the UK which, although it can turn nasty
here, doesn't seem to have anything to compete with the raw threat of
nature in the wild areas of the USA. We don't need to worry about bears
killing us in the UK or being days of walking away from *anyone* else.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7018484.stm

Thanks for the link, a good read.
--
Paul reply-to is valid

Dave N said:

I've just come across the following article, on the BBC web site,
which I found interesting and evocative. It brought to mind the
comparatively benign nature of wilderness in the UK which, although
it can turn nasty here, doesn't seem to have anything to compete with
the raw threat of nature in the wild areas of the USA. We don't need
to worry about bears killing us in the UK or being days of walking
away from *anyone* else.

Yes, we have a very "safe" wilderness here, which I rather like. Pity about
the increasing amount of nannying we have to put up with.

One thing that particularly appeals to me about New Zealand is that it's a
relatively "safe" wilderness too. Far more "real" wilderness (about 80% of
the country IIRC) with a pretty small population, so you can get a long way
away from people there too, and of the course the mountains are higher and
there's greater danger from river crossings and so on. But the plus point is
that there are no bears, no wolves, no mountain lions etc. No large wild
animals wanting to eat you. So provided you're equipped to deal with the
topographical and climatological dangers, it's relatively "safe".

Quoted message said:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7018484.stm

A few points about the article, which is good, but you know how picky I am.
:-)

"This time of year, the sands of daylight slip through the hourglass rather
quickly for those of us who live in the northern latitudes."

No it doesn't. This time of year the length of the days is average. I guess
people who live in northern latitudes take the long summer days for granted,
forgetting that summer days are shorter further south. These "short"
September days are comparable to summer days near the equator.

"Everyone wants to Get Out at least once before they start to hibernate."

Hibernating for the winter? That's a very strange attitude! Those who truly
love the wilds generally go out all year, and I'm sure that many of us here
know the delights of winter walking/camping.

Of course, Alaska is probably not the best place for winter backpacking, but
the author lives in Seattle and thinks nothing of flying north to Alaska. So
why not fly south for some winter trips?

"These lands, protected by the Wilderness Act of 1964, are considered areas
'where man himself is but a visitor who does not remain', as the law puts
it."

That's interesting. I guess we do have real wilderness in the UK after all,
according to that definition.

Paul

Paul Saunders said:

Dave N said:

I've just come across the following article, on the BBC web site,

Quoted message said:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7018484.stm

A few points about the article, which is good, but you know how picky I am.
:-)

"This time of year, the sands of daylight slip through the hourglass rather
quickly for those of us who live in the northern latitudes."

No it doesn't. This time of year the length of the days is average. I guess
people who live in northern latitudes take the long summer days for granted,
forgetting that summer days are shorter further south. These "short"
September days are comparable to summer days near the equator.

But the rate of change of day length is highest at the equinox. Today
is nearly four minutes shorter than yesterday. That's nearly half an
hour difference over a week, so I think the phrase "sands of daylight
slipping through the hourglass" is appropriate to this time of year,
I've really been noticing the nights drawing in and the dawn slipping
later for a month. In midwinter and midsummer the sands merely trickle
by comparison and it is hard to tell that the day is getting longer or
shorter.
--
Phil Cook, last hill: Angletarn Pikes via Beda Fell.
http://www.p-t-cook.freeserve.co.uk/May07/martin9.htm

Phil Cook said:

Quoted message said:

"This time of year, the sands of daylight slip through the hourglass
rather quickly for those of us who live in the northern latitudes."

No it doesn't. This time of year the length of the days is average.
I guess people who live in northern latitudes take the long summer
days for granted, forgetting that summer days are shorter further
south. These "short" September days are comparable to summer days
near the equator.

But the rate of change of day length is highest at the equinox. Today
is nearly four minutes shorter than yesterday. That's nearly half an
hour difference over a week, so I think the phrase "sands of daylight
slipping through the hourglass" is appropriate to this time of year,

That's a good point, I didn't think of it that way.

Quoted message said:

I've really been noticing the nights drawing in and the dawn slipping
later for a month.

True, but we've still got sufficient daylight at the moment. It's at the end
of October that we should really start complaining, particularly since we
switch back to GMT then.

Anyone else agree that we should use BST all year round? Given our modern
"civilised" tendency to stay awake late every night (well into the darkness
hours), and wake up comparatively late (usually after the sun has risen),
midnight is no longer midnight for most of us. The "civilised" middle of the
night is actually around 4am (that was quite apparent to me during my brief
time spent driving minicabs in London).

Paul

The message <[email hidden]>
from Dave N <[email hidden]> contains these words:

Quoted message said:

I've just come across the following article, on the BBC web site, which
I found interesting and evocative. It brought to mind the comparatively
benign nature of wilderness in the UK which, although it can turn nasty
here, doesn't seem to have anything to compete with the raw threat of
nature in the wild areas of the USA. We don't need to worry about bears
killing us in the UK or being days of walking away from *anyone* else.

Quoted message said:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7018484.stm

The tale was covered somewhat differently in The Independent recently
which had the added information that the youth had burned both his money
and his map. A map which might in the end have saved his life when he
failed to cross a river attempting to get back to civilisation not
knowing that he was only a quarter of a mile from a bridge.

--
Roger Chapman
Nearest Marilyn still to be visited - Great Orme.
89 miles as the crow flies,
considerably more as the walker drives.

Phil Cook said:

Paul Saunders said:

"This time of year, the sands of daylight slip through the hourglass rather
quickly for those of us who live in the northern latitudes."

No it doesn't. This time of year the length of the days is average. I guess
people who live in northern latitudes take the long summer days for granted,
forgetting that summer days are shorter further south. These "short"
September days are comparable to summer days near the equator.

But the rate of change of day length is highest at the equinox. Today
is nearly four minutes shorter than yesterday. That's nearly half an
hour difference over a week, so I think the phrase "sands of daylight
slipping through the hourglass" is appropriate to this time of year,
I've really been noticing the nights drawing in and the dawn slipping
later for a month. In midwinter and midsummer the sands merely trickle
by comparison and it is hard to tell that the day is getting longer or
shorter.

That's what I took the author to mean as well. One can talk of the long
balmy evenings of summer where, by implication, the length doesn't
change very much day-to-day. During Autumn and Spring, however, one
does notice more the changing length of daylight as each week passes. I
expect that this only holds true for where we live in the northern
latitudes, let's say more than 45 deg N, and presumably the same for the
southern hemisphere.

Paul,
I think of a sine wave function plotted as a graph. The greatest rate
of change is when the value crosses zero. It's a bit like the Brecon
Beacons, on the slope half way up a hill with a flat top in front and a
flat bottom behind. 🙂)

--
Dave N

N.B. Mail sent to "nospam" will be rejected. The Reply-To address works.

Roger said:

The tale was covered somewhat differently in The Independent recently
which had the added information that the youth had burned both his money
and his map. A map which might in the end have saved his life when he
failed to cross a river attempting to get back to civilisation not
knowing that he was only a quarter of a mile from a bridge.

I don't doubt that there are different perspectives on how the young man
died but I wasn't too concerned whether this was reporting of all the
evidence, because it is a magazine article and not a news article. It
merely noted that he went into the wilderness on his own and seemingly
badly equipped, and was found dead some time later. It speculated that
he had died of starvation - no more than that.

I regard the tale of the young man as incidental to the point of the
article, which is that "the great outdoors" can be a dangerous place but
deliberately juxtaposed with a romantic overview of the wilderness.

--
Dave N

N.B. Mail sent to "nospam" will be rejected. The Reply-To address works.

Roger said:

The tale was covered somewhat differently in The Independent recently
which had the added information that the youth had burned both his money
and his map. A map which might in the end have saved his life when he
failed to cross a river attempting to get back to civilisation not
knowing that he was only a quarter of a mile from a bridge.

I don't doubt that there are different perspectives on how the young man
died but I wasn't too concerned whether this was reporting of all the
evidence, because it is a magazine article and not a news article. It
merely noted that he went into the wilderness on his own and seemingly
badly equipped, and was found dead some time later. It speculated that
he had died of starvation - no more than that.

I regard the tale of the young man as incidental to the point of the
article, which is that "the great outdoors" can be a dangerous place but
deliberately juxtaposed with a romantic overview of the wilderness.

--
Dave N

N.B. Mail sent to "nospam" will be rejected. The Reply-To address works.

Dave N said:

Phil Cook wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

But the rate of change of day length is highest at the equinox.

That's what I took the author to mean as well.

Yes, I just misinterpreted it, that's all. However, he did talk about
"having one last trip" and "hibernating for the winter" which suggested to
me that the length of the day was one of his main issues (along with colder
weather obviously).

Quoted message said:

One can talk of the
long balmy evenings of summer where, by implication, the length
doesn't change very much day-to-day. During Autumn and Spring,
however, one does notice more the changing length of daylight as each
week passes. I expect that this only holds true for where we live in
the northern latitudes, let's say more than 45 deg N, and presumably
the same for the southern hemisphere.

Yes, I doubt you'd notice much change if you lived near the equator.

Quoted message said:

I think of a sine wave function plotted as a graph. The greatest rate
of change is when the value crosses zero. It's a bit like the Brecon
Beacons, on the slope half way up a hill with a flat top in front and
a flat bottom behind. 🙂)

Yep, see here:
http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/swansea.html

Another interesting point, particularly for photographers, is that the
length of twilight is longer in summer and winter, shorter at the equinoxes.
For example, from the web page above, the current length of twilight in
Swansea is 49 minutes, but in 3 months time it will be 72 minutes, due to
the shallower angle of the sun's path in winter.

The site above doesn't give figures for summer, but you can see from the
thickness of the dawn and dusk bands that twilight is longer in summer. Not
quite sure why since it sets at a steeper angle (twilight is shorter nearer
the equator for that reason), but it also doesn't go very far below the
horizon in summer, so it never reaches the astronomical twilight limit (-18
degrees) and never gets truly dark here in summer.

Paul

Dave N said:

Phil Cook wrote:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

But the rate of change of day length is highest at the equinox.

That's what I took the author to mean as well.

Yes, I just misinterpreted it, that's all. However, he did talk about
"having one last trip" and "hibernating for the winter" which suggested to
me that the length of the day was one of his main issues (along with colder
weather obviously).

Quoted message said:

One can talk of the
long balmy evenings of summer where, by implication, the length
doesn't change very much day-to-day. During Autumn and Spring,
however, one does notice more the changing length of daylight as each
week passes. I expect that this only holds true for where we live in
the northern latitudes, let's say more than 45 deg N, and presumably
the same for the southern hemisphere.

Yes, I doubt you'd notice much change if you lived near the equator.

Quoted message said:

I think of a sine wave function plotted as a graph. The greatest rate
of change is when the value crosses zero. It's a bit like the Brecon
Beacons, on the slope half way up a hill with a flat top in front and
a flat bottom behind. 🙂)

Yep, see here:
http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/swansea.html

Another interesting point, particularly for photographers, is that the
length of twilight is longer in summer and winter, shorter at the equinoxes.
For example, from the web page above, the current length of twilight in
Swansea is 49 minutes, but in 3 months time it will be 72 minutes, due to
the shallower angle of the sun's path in winter.

The site above doesn't give figures for summer, but you can see from the
thickness of the dawn and dusk bands that twilight is longer in summer. Not
quite sure why since it sets at a steeper angle (twilight is shorter nearer
the equator for that reason), but it also doesn't go very far below the
horizon in summer, so it never reaches the astronomical twilight limit (-18
degrees) and never gets truly dark here in summer.

Paul

Dave N said:

I regard the tale of the young man as incidental to the point of the
article, which is that "the great outdoors" can be a dangerous place
but deliberately juxtaposed with a romantic overview of the
wilderness.

Yeah, the wilderness used to be a nasty place, but now it's become sanitised
(in the UK at least) which is a good thing to a large extent IMO, since I
rather like the romantic view of it. It's nice to be able to go out and camp
wild and "find yourself" under the illusion that you're in the middle of
nowhere, but knowing that you're not going to be eaten by bears or attacked
by bandits, and that civilisation isn't far away if you really need it.

On the other hand, there are plenty of wildernesses in this world which are
still nasty, and that's obviously more applicable to the US wilderness,
which the article was about.

Once more I'll give a plug for New Zealand, real wilderness but without the
bears and bandits.

Paul

Paul Saunders said:

Yep, see here:
http://www.gaisma.com/en/location/swansea.html

Another interesting point, particularly for photographers, is that the
length of twilight is longer in summer and winter, shorter at the equinoxes.
For example, from the web page above, the current length of twilight in
Swansea is 49 minutes, but in 3 months time it will be 72 minutes, due to
the shallower angle of the sun's path in winter.

The site above doesn't give figures for summer, but you can see from the
thickness of the dawn and dusk bands that twilight is longer in summer. Not
quite sure why since it sets at a steeper angle (twilight is shorter nearer
the equator for that reason), but it also doesn't go very far below the
horizon in summer, so it never reaches the astronomical twilight limit (-18
degrees) and never gets truly dark here in summer.

Thank you for that, it is interesting and has exposed a whole new area
of ignorance for me. I must go and do some reading.

Anecdotally, I have noticed a major difference in the length of days
(and residual night-time light levels) between the South East of England
where I live and the North West of Scotland, during the Summer, but
there is only a small difference in latitude. Perhaps some of the
perceived difference is caused by electric light pollution where I live
and its comparative absence in the Highlands?

--
Dave N

N.B. Mail sent to "nospam" will be rejected. The Reply-To address works.

Dave N said:

Thank you for that, it is interesting and has exposed a whole new area
of ignorance for me. I must go and do some reading.

Well for your reference, there are three definitions of twilight:

Civil twilight: when the sun is 6 degrees below the horizon.
Nautical twilight: -12 degrees (seems to get dark later at sea?)
Astronomical twilight: -18 degrees (complete darkness, when no light from
the sun pollutes the sky).

I think nautical twilight is probably the best measure of darkness when
you're out wild camping, since your eyes get used to the dark gradually.
Although it depends a lot on the weather conditions. When it's cloudy or
raining it seems to get dark sooner, probably because the clouds block the
sun's rays after it has set.

For twilight photography, the practical limit seems to be somewhere between
civil and nautical, perhaps 8 or 9 degrees? But I can't be sure about that.

Astronomical twilight is not relevant to most people, unless you're actually
into astronomy. And of course, you need an absense of moonlight too for a
really dark night. IIRC, I think the sun only goes about 13-15 degrees below
the horizon in summer in the UK.

Quoted message said:

Anecdotally, I have noticed a major difference in the length of days
(and residual night-time light levels) between the South East of
England where I live and the North West of Scotland, during the
Summer, but there is only a small difference in latitude.

But like your sine wave example, we're so far north that a small difference
in latitude makes a disproportionately large difference in day length. I
think that winter days in the north can be roughly 6 hours long compared to
8 hours in the south.

Quoted message said:

Perhaps
some of the perceived difference is caused by electric light
pollution where I live and its comparative absence in the Highlands?

Do you mean that the days seem much longer in the north, or vice versa? They
should do. It should get far less dark up there in the summer nights since
the sun remains even closer to the horizon.

Or do you mean the other way around? Lighter in the south? If so, then it's
the streetlights to blame.

Paul

On 30 Sep,

Paul Saunders said:

Anyone else agree that we should use BST all year round? Given our modern
"civilised" tendency to stay awake late every night (well into the darkness
hours), and wake up comparatively late (usually after the sun has risen),
midnight is no longer midnight for most of us. The "civilised" middle of
the night is actually around 4am (that was quite apparent to me during my
brief time spent driving minicabs in London).

Definitely not' if anything let's stay on GMT. I don't want to get up in the
dark at 9:30am.

--
BD
Change lycos to yahoo to reply

Quoted message said:

Definitely not' if anything let's stay on GMT. I don't want to get up
in the dark at 9:30am.

Where do you live? Trondheim?

Paul

On 30 Sep,

Paul Saunders said:

Quoted message said:

Definitely not' if anything let's stay on GMT. I don't want to get up
in the dark at 9:30am.

Where do you live? Trondheim?

Where I lived (in the north west corner of England) when the infamous
experiment of British Standard Time (GMT+1) was being conducted, sunset in
the winter was as late as 9:38AM. 9AM was decidedly dark. North west Scotland
was considerably later.

--
BD
Change lycos to yahoo to reply

Quoted message said:

Where I lived (in the north west corner of England) when the infamous
experiment of British Standard Time (GMT+1) was being conducted, sunset in

^^^^^^
Oops, should read sunrise.

Quoted message said:

the winter was as late as 9:38AM. 9AM was decidedly dark. North west
Scotland was considerably later.

--
BD
Change lycos to yahoo to reply

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Definitely not' if anything let's stay on GMT. I don't want to get
up in the dark at 9:30am.

Where do you live? Trondheim?

Where I lived (in the north west corner of England) when the infamous
experiment of British Standard Time (GMT+1) was being conducted,
sunset in the winter was as late as 9:38AM. 9AM was decidedly dark.
North west Scotland was considerably later.

Fair enough, but it's not dark at sunrise. It's common to assume that the
hours of daylight run from sunrise to sunset, but let's be honest, it gets
light before sunrise and stays light after sunset. You get at least 1 hour
extra of decent light, 2 if you count all the way from dark to dark.

So yes, 9am probably seemed "dark" (to eyes accustomed to indoor lighting).

I think the problem is not time itself, but by the hours that civilised
humans organised their work and play.

In practice it would make no difference if we stuck to GMT all the time,
provided we altered our work schedules at different times of year. But of
course, it's easier just to change the time (which just goes to show how
arbitrary the concept of time is in the first place). The whole idea of
having "an hour extra" or "an hour less" is complete nonsense. The change
really just means going to work at a different time and watching TV
programmes at different times.

So perhaps it would be better if you lot just carry on as normal. Maybe it
would be better for me to stick to GMT all the time and organise my day as
it suits me best.

Thinking about it, adding an hour in summer just causes people to wake up an
hour earlier than they normally would, and since I enjoy being out and about
early in the morning, it's actually an advantage to me for people to stay in
bed longer and give me an extra hour in peace!

So who wants to vote for using GMT all year instead? :-)

Paul

In message <[email hidden]>

Paul Saunders said:

Astronomical twilight is not relevant to most people, unless you're actually
into astronomy. And of course, you need an absense of moonlight too for a
really dark night. IIRC, I think the sun only goes about 13-15 degrees below
the horizon in summer in the UK.

It's very noticeable in the summer (probably not if you're in a city,
and probably wasn't this last summer, what with all the cloud), but at
midnight GMT there's still a fairly obvious glow to the north, in
Cumbria, anyway. I don't know if it gets dark enough to not see it
down south.

--
Simon Challands