In 2005, was enjoying healthy growth as an internet startup when founder made a curious choice: he opened a storefront in Seattle. In the following years, Evo would open locations in Denver; Portland, Oregon; and Whistler, British Columbia. Today those shops bring in a significant percentage of the company’s $110 million annual revenue. More important, Phillips says, they’re gathering spaces for the local outdoor community, offering live music, events, and showings by local artists, and serving as organizing centers for philanthropic projects. In 2014, Evo doubled down on real-world retail by launching La Familia, a program that allows its online customers to pick up purchases at independent gear shops. This winter, Evo will start building a commercial campus in downtown Salt Lake City. Plans include a hotel, apartment units, restaurants, a skate park, and a climbing wall. We checked in with Phillips to ask about his enduring commitment to serving urban adventurers.

OUTSIDE: Why the focus on cities for your stores, instead of classic outdoor towns?
PHILLIPS: When Evo first started, we saw that there was a huge population of people living professional lives in cities, and what inspires them is the outdoors. But there wasn’t a place for them to connect. So when we opened our first store in Seattle in 2005, it was as much—if not more—a venue and community center.

Why invest in stores at all when three-quarters of your sales are online?
In the early 2000s, when I talked about opening a store, a lot of people looked at me strangely. They said, Stores are going away. And I was like, You don’t get it. What we do here, you cannot do online. You can’t have a movie premiere with a bunch of people screaming and high-fiving. You can’t get your boots fit. If you want to thrive, you have to foster a sense of connection with your customers. The businesses that create a place for this to happen will thrive.

Many retail chains seek uniformity across their stores. Why do you do the opposite and give your shops a strong local flavor?
If we build a store that doesn’t respond to the uniqueness of the location, we’re stamping something out. The assortment of products or the art on the walls has to be relevant to the local community. An algorithm isn’t going to tell you which kind of events to host, and those insights are what we bring together in a retail environment. This matters more and more as Amazon commoditizes the world.

Having online customers pick up purchases at non-Evo gear shops—which might be your competitors—seems a strange choice.
For the health of outdoor sports and the outdoor community, retail stores need to endure. And the reality is that Evo can’t and shouldn’t open our own stores everywhere. But when we sell online, we can’t connect the final dot to the customer without a store. So why not lean into the great ones that are in business for the same reasons that we are? It’s a one-plus-one-equals-three kind of thing.

What’s the vision behind the Salt Lake City campus? Who is it for?
Every detail is tailored to people living the dual lifestyle of urban and outdoors. We want the experience to be seamless. You come for a restaurant and end up watching someone climb, or you realize that this is a place to bring your kids skateboarding. We create something much better when we think about the holistic experience rather than just carve out our four walls.

The post Evo’s Bryce Phillips Is the Guru of Outdoor Retail appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

Over the past year and a half of producing the Science of Survival series for the şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Podcast, we’ve spoken to dozens of people who endured life-threatening ordeals. By combining their stories with analysis from experts, we’ve attempted to make sense of what they went through and understand how they were able to come out the other side alive. Our biggest takeaway: the most powerful and mysterious part of any survival tale begins after the bleeding stops and the fire is out. While some survivors wage endless battles with imagined dangers, others are reborn with enhanced strength and purpose. We’ve only begun to comprehend the forces that shape near-death experiences, but just hearing incredible stories like the ones we’ve gathered here can better prepare us to withstand whatever comes our way.

Case Study 1: Struck

KrisĚýNorbratenĚýwas leading a group of young women on a climbing expedition inĚýVedauwoo, Wyoming, in 2014, when a lightning bolt from a fast-approaching storm struck the outcrop they were on and traveled up through the ground beneath them. Everyone survived, but the incident leftĚýNorbraten, then 38, traumatized. As time went by, however, her coping mechanism gave way to a creative flowering that has changed her life even more than the strike itself did.

Struck by Lightning

The bizarre science behind Phil Broscovak's lightning strike, and his incredible journey of recovery.

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Around two o’clock, we saw a storm brewing in the distance. We decided to head out and were packing up lunches, lowering people down, cleaning up our gear, and so forth. The lightning hit above us, traveled through the rock, and knocked us over like bowling pins. There were kids sitting on the rock, leaning on the rock, gathering up to hike back down. Then they were screaming, freaking out. It’s quite painful having that much electricity move through your body. The most mystifying thing to me was that, at one moment I was standing in one place, and the next moment I was in a completely different place. It was surreal.

A couple of months later, I was at home and heard a garbage can being rolled across gravel. It sounded like thunder, and my body went into that flight response. It wasn’t logical—it was very old-brain, reactive, get-me-the-hell-out-of-here. Everything had become raw. It’s like all your nerves are cooked. The world was this very abrasive place to live in. Lights and sounds were difficult. Crowded rooms. Children crying. They were all terrible to be around.

I holed up for a long time. I also started writing. Originally, it was this tiny project, a short story, cathartic, get some energy out. But I kept going. I’m at 350 pages now. Writing was something I was always good at, but I never had the idea, and I was never committed enough. After getting struck, it all just opened up. I don’t yet know how to explain it very well, because I feel very young in my understanding of what happened. But I do feel it was a birth into the second half of my life—like stepping through a door.

I’m hopeful. Not in some super happy way, but I think it can work. A lightning strike is less than a millisecond. One millisecond redefined my life. I would not go back and undo it and hand over my manuscript. Never. It’s been a tough journey, but I have a novel. I’m a writer now. It’s the work I’ll do for the rest of my life.

Case Study 2: Broken

In the summer of 2010, Joe Stone crashed while paragliding from Mount Jumbo, near Missoula, Montana. He spent almost a month in an induced coma and woke up to learn that he’d lost the use of his legs and most of the fine motor skills in his hands. Initially despondent, he quickly decided that he’d find new ways to chase adventure. Three years after his accident, at age 28, he became the first quadriplegic to complete an Ironman triathlon. Last year he took his first BASE jump off a bridge in Draper, Utah. For Stone, the challenge of finding his way back from his injuries has been deeply gratifying. But for his family, especially his mother, Kim, the process has meant letting go of the impulse to protect Joe from his biggest danger: himself.

After the Crash, Part 1

What do you do when you’re addicted to adrenaline but confined to a wheelchair? So much more than people expect.

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Joe Stone:ĚýI don’t remember the crash. I launched, flew away from the mountain to gain altitude, then did a barrel roll. I think I might have collapsed part of my wing. I smacked right into the side of the mountain at probably 50 miles per hour. Some hikers called 911, and I was helicoptered to the ER. They had to remove my C7 vertebra; the bone was just completely blown up.

The moment I realized I was never going to fly again was way harder to deal with than not being able to walk. My dreams were in flying. I thought, I’m just this weak little quadriplegic who can’t do anything.

That first year, I made it a goal to handcycle over Logan’s Pass, in Glacier National Park. I had to dig deeper than I’d ever dug before to keep cranking. It took 14 hours for me to go 50 miles, but it opened my whole world up. When I realized that no quad had ever done an Ironman, it was pretty easy to make that my next goal. I had a really awesome eight months of training. At the start of the race, I had to pull up my goggles to wipe away the tears. Three years earlier, I’d been in a hospital bed thinking that I’d spend the rest of my life in a nursing home. Now I’m at an Ironman. I don’t know how to explain how that felt.

After the Crash, Part 2

Once Joe Stone learned to use his paralyzed body, he decided he’d race an Ironman. Then he went even bigger.

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After that, I realized that my disability wasn’t truly a limitation. There’s always another way. If it’s something that hasn’t been done before, it just means I’ve got to figure out a way to do it. Once I understood that concept, I was limitless. Soon after I started flying again, we launched off a mountain right next to the one I crashed on. From total devastation to total stoke. Now, seven years after the crash, I have a life full of opportunity and joy, friendship and adventure, thrills and getting scared again. That’s really all I was searching for.

Kim Stone:ĚýAs a mom, you do so much to raise your kid—to basically hand him his body. You’re healthy, you’re grown, you’re smart, now go make your way. I was like, Joe, how could you break down your body like this? Knowing I couldn’t fix it, the way I’d bandaged him his whole life—that was really hard.

It was a year or so after his accident that he told me, “I’m the happiest in my life that I’ve ever been, more than before my accident.” At that point I began sleeping through the night, because I knew that, deep down inside, he was OK.

Then he started BASE jumping. It was extremely hard to watch that. I’ve gone through phases when I thought he’s just being so selfish. It doesn’t seem like that thrill is worth dying for. But I always go back to: this is who he is. I want him to be safe, but he would not be happy just doing what most of us do. That would be even harder to watch, because he would not be the same person. But God forbid, I wouldn’t want him to get hurt any more than he already is.Ěý

Case Study 3: Hunted

In 1970, four young travelers headed to Bolivia for an ambitious adventure: they would paddle a tributary of the Amazon until they met up with the mighty river itself, then continue on through Brazil. And they would hunt and forage for their food. For Ed Welch, the trip was especially daunting—he only went along because his adventurous new girlfriend, Vicki Adcock, had invited him. Then, a couple of weeks in, he and the other man on the trip were chased up a tree by a jaguar, where they spent a sleepless night expecting to be eaten. Living through that and then completing the voyage gave Welch the strength to follow Vicki around the world for decades—and eventually find new courage after her death.

Treed by a Jaguar

The story of two explorers chased down—well, technically up—by a jaguar

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We were searching for our canoe, which some Bolivian soldiers had “borrowed” and not returned. We came to this big area of eight-foot-tall grass—that’s when we heard it. There was no question it was a jaguar. We ran until we found a tree we could climb. We were probably 35 feet up and had a machete and a .22. We couldn’t see very well, but we heard it pacing around the tree. Just a week before, a guy had been eaten by a jaguar exactly where we were. So we stayed up there the whole night, listening for anything that would signal an attack. Sometime in the early morning the jaguar left. When we got back to camp, the girls were mostly just unhappy that we’d taken both weapons.

I never shied away from anything after that. Vicki and I got married and ran a goat dairy farm in Washington, but we kept traveling. We’d say, “Oh, let’s climb this mountain,” and then we would.

When Vicki died from cancer in 2013, I basically just worked. I didn’t realize I was depressed. I’d get up in the morning, milk the goats, do my chores, take a nap in the afternoon, and then do the evening chores. It was hard for me to figure out who I was, because throughout our life, I’d borrowed her courage and energy to do so many things. She had all this curiosity and not a lot of fear.

Then I went to India and Africa. It was part of the grieving process. I did a safari in the Serengeti. I traveled through some potentially hazardous places. I climbed Kilimanjaro. I was 68 and it was hard, but it rekindled my desire to do more difficult things—to test myself against that fear.

Case Stude 4: Twisted

Weather Channel meteorologist MikeĚýBettesĚýand his film crew were chasing a tornado in Oklahoma in 2013 when the twister turned and struck their GMC Yukon. The vehicle was hurled 100 yards, across three lanes of traffic, and sent tumbling into a nearby field. The tornado, dubbed El Reno after a town it had passed, was 2.6 miles wide—the largest ever recorded. It also killed eight people, including two well-known stormchasers. ThoughĚýBettesĚýescaped with minor injuries, the near miss haunted him. It took another life-changing event for him to fully recover.

The Death Blow

When forecasts called for a massive tornado in central Oklahoma in 2013, storm chasers flocked to the area. Then all hell broke loose.

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I’d never seen a tornado like that. It was aquamarine in color, wider than it was tall. A monster—and it was right out our window. I remember telling everybody to duck, and then it hit. It was just the most violent impact, like a giant sledgehammer smashing the vehicle. Everything slowed down, and I felt this weightlessness. I thought, Wow, we’re floating up into the tornado. I wonder if we’re hundreds of feet off the ground. Is this when I die?

I probably suffered through some form of PTSD for months. I had nightmares every night. There was always a different ending, but usually it was me dying. Then it got to the point where I wasn’t thinking about the tornado but had these visions of dying in various ways. Just this constant fear of death. Time wasn’t healing the wounds. Eventually, I started seeing a therapist. Being able to talk to someone helped me get past the worst of it.

A year and a half after the tornado, my wife was pregnant and we were going to the doctor. It was that appointment where you find out whether you’re going to have a boy or a girl. It was also my wife’s birthday. The doctor told us we’re going to have a little boy, and at that moment everything changed. That was the point where I was like, OK, I’ve got this thing licked. All of a sudden, it became more or less an asterisk in my life instead of a moment that controlled me.

El Reno forced me to reevaluate what was really important, whether the rewards of my profession outweighed the risks. It was remarkable to go through the experience, and that whole year really was this circle of life, from near-death to a new beginning. It’s been fabulous ever since.

Case Study 5: Burned

Greg and Julie Welch were a day into a kayaking trip in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters in 2012 when a distant forest fire began burning straight toward their campsite. The Pagami Creek Fire torched 70,000 acres in less than four hours. Thanks to fast thinking and a lucky shift in the weather, the Welches survived. The experience left Greg exhilarated. But Julie continues to battle the fear that overtook her as they raced from the flames.

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On the other side of a traumatic adventure mishap lie nightmares, a never-ending recovery, and sometimes an entirely new perspective on existence itself.

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Greg Welch:ĚýThe fire was unreal. The flames were blowing completely horizontal. It sounded like a freight train coming through the woods.

Julie Welch:ĚýI started packing gear in drybags. I was scared to death. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely do anything.

Greg:ĚýJulie paddled out and disappeared into the smoke. Then flames came shooting out of the forest. That’s when I pushed off.

Julie:ĚýI had no idea where Greg was. I was screaming his name until a gust of wind lifted the smoke for a second and I could see that he was maybe 20 feet away.

Greg:ĚýThe wind pushed Julie sideways and flipped her kayak. I got out of my kayak into the water and started kicking toward her.

Julie:ĚýIt was just insane. I thought we were going to cross the lake and get the heck out of there. Then all of a sudden it’s 360 degrees of fire. There was nowhere to go.

Greg:ĚýThe wind ended up pushing us into a large rock, so I jumped on and grabbed the back of Julie’s life jacket and helped her out of the water. That’s when everything changed.

Survival Advice from Comic Strips

Tips on self-defense, BASE jumping, and how to make it out of a plane crash alive.

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Julie:ĚýHere we are in the middle of a forest fire, and it starts hailing—huge hail the size of nickels. Then it started raining buckets.

Greg:ĚýIt put the fire out, the whole thing. I was standing on the rock, jumping up and down and screaming at the fire. I thought, Boy, is it good to be alive!

Julie:ĚýI was shaking my head at him, be­cause I’m thinking, OK, that was the end of the world. It was Armageddon. I don’t know why he’s so exhilarated. I was in shock.

Greg:ĚýThe experience just didn’t mess with me much. I’ve always been somebody who likes taking risks. I didn’t lose anything. I didn’t lose anybody. We didn’t even have a burn mark. I’m almost glad I went through it. How many people get to do something like that and walk away?Ěý

Julie:ĚýIf you could see me right now, I’m flushed. I’m shaking. I hate talking about it. Greg, it’s his favorite… whatever. When he starts talking about it with someone, I might leave the room. My stomach gets in knots, and I have huge anxiety. I can go back to the Boundary Waters now, but the whole time I’m on edge. The wind blows and it scares the hell out of me. I get this creepy, eerie feeling. It’s the fear that disaster is going to strike again. I hope someday I can overcome it.

The post Real Survival Begins After You’ve Made It Out Alive appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

My college girlfriend and I used to love to walk to the local Blockbuster and peruse the shelves. We would ghost along the middle aisles of aged videos, our feet shuffling along the thin blue carpet, and occasionally lift a box for the other to reject with a noncommittal shrug. Now, of course, we peruse online, and Blockbuster has been reduced to a , a last , and a blast of nostalgia forĚýpeople like me.

When we want to buy a bike, however, we still go through a similar ritual: we go to a local shop and wander the aisles.ĚýBut recent shifts in sales and business models are changing the way that we buy bikes, and some shop owners are worried that if things don't change, they could become a relic, too.Ěý

The clouds have been gathering over the independent bike shop for some time. According to the National Bicycle Dealers Association, there’s been a 42 percent decline in bike shops since the industry’s height in 2001, when a population injected with Armstrong enthusiasm stormed shops across the United States, demanding carbon fiber and spandex.

Although a general increase in store size has allowed overall revenue to stay relatively constant, and every city with a healthy bike sceneĚýcan point to a shop that’s thriving, this trend does not bode well. So any change in the purchasing habits of consumers looking for a new ride can cause the industry to look furtively upward.

And the storm building over their heads looks a lot like Canyon Bicycles, which is set to enter the U.S. market next year.Ěý

You may have seen the diminutive Colombian bullet, Nairo Quintana, win the Vuelta a España on a Canyon. You might have salivated over of the company’s MTB line. Over the past decade, the German manufacturer has been increasing market share in Europe, growing roughly 30 percent each year and claiming nearly $180 million in revenue for 2015. What worries independent retailers is thatĚýCanyon did it entirely through direct-to-your-door online sales.ĚýBypassing the local shop meansĚýCanyon is able to sell its bikes at a steep discount compared to prices at Joe’s Wheels and Deals. For many, the convenience and savings of purchasing online outweighs the benefits of test rides and a free tune-up.

Until now, bike shops have been somewhat insulated from the impact of e-retail, largely because a typical shop earns nearly half its revenue from sales of complete bikes, and manufacturers have heavily committed themselves to selling through bike shops and keeping their bikes out of digital shopping carts. But recently, in response to Canyon and the pressure to adapt to a changing sales model, both and introduced online sales.Ěý

This is big news that has seriously worried theĚýshops that rely on these brands. To allay their concerns, both manufacturers have doubled down on their relationships with stores that carry their product. “I appreciate the bind these manufacturers are in,”Ěýsays Erik Tonkin, owner of Sellwood Cycle Repair in Portland.Ěý“They’re trying to do the right thing, but they’re having to acknowledge market forces.ĚýBut they also don’t want to piss off their brick-and-mortar network, so they’re trying to thread the needle.”Ěý

Say you want a new Giant or Trek, but the closest shop to you is across town and you really don’t want to put on pants. SoĚýyou hop online. You know your size, and purchasing is as easy as choosing the model you want. Click, pay, done. Almost. You still have to put on pants eventually, because rather than showing up at your doorstep, the manufacturer shippedĚýyour new 15-pound rocket to your local dealer. The shop builds the bike, shakes your hand, and throws in that free tune-up. You get convenience, and the shop gets close to the same revenueĚýas if the bike had been in stock. For the consumer, that means there's no discount for bikes purchased online: instead, she's getting the benefit of convenienceĚýand a broader selection of models.Ěý

That all speaks to the potential for positive symbiosis. If online sales increase, shops need to carry less inventory, thus lowering their overhead and credit debt to manufacturers. Consumers still get the shop experience that Giant and Trek hope will keep cyclists loyal to their product. Shops further pivot toward the service-over-sales model that builds a relationship with their community, and passers-by still glimpse their dream bikes through store windows.Ěý“I don’t think it’s a bad thing,” says Tonkin. “It’s reality. Whichever company does this the best might just get more brick-and-mortar sales out of this.”Ěý

But there are a few issues.Ěý

Problem one: the online-to-shop model must respect MSRP and the margins necessary for a shop to keep its doors open. If models like Canyon catch on, Trek and Giant can’t hope to price match without cutting out your local shop. Sure, consumers may decide they value shop and brand loyalty over price, but that’s pretty soft ground to build a house on. Just ask defunct bookstore Borders.

Problem two: because of their long avoidance of internet sales, these companies have potentially already drilled into the hulls of their brick-and-mortar ships.ĚýUntil recently, big manufacturers had responded to the internet with a kind of retail land grab, maneuvering to dominate entire stores rather than share space with competitors. Instead of basing wholesale prices on the number of bikes ordered, brands began basing them on what percentage of a shop’s inventory that particular brand represents. If, say, 60 percent of your stock is a single brand, you get one price. If it’s 80 percent, you get a much bigger discount. The required percentage has crept higher every year. These days, the very best deals don’t kick in until shops devote 95 percent of their inventory to one brand. With margins as thin as they are, the incentive to essentially become a showroom for a single brand is significant. This system,Ěýcombined with shops purchasing on credit,Ěýnearly buried independent retailers in 2015.Ěý

“Most manufacturers rolled back commitments because last year was so bad,” says another shop owner in Portland, Oregon who asked not to be named. Ěý“The industry is unhealthy and everybody we deal with didn't front load us this year.ĚýThe shops that are still getting front loaded won't be here for long.”

This means your middle-tier manufacturers, like Santa Cruz and Yeti, which have beenĚýpushed out of the storefront by the big three, have a huge incentive to jump on the direct-to-consumer model. They haven't done so yet, but if Canyon is successful in the U.S., brands like Yeti and Santa Cruz will likely follow suit quickly.ĚýAs more manufacturers bypass shops altogether and sell at online-competitive prices, consumers’ sense of “what a bike costs” will lower, and shops will have difficulty competing.

“Sell your shop now, or enter the demise of all brick and mortars,” says Mike Romanco, CEO at Mike’s E-Bikes, in response to Trek’s online sales program. “You’d be better off working out of your home and just having a delivery van.”

Which, funny enough,Ěýis exactly what’s happening. From the swell of increased online sales and sidelined brands, the mobile mechanic has emerged, riding the wave of change in a tool-filled Sprinter.

Beeline Bikes and Velofix are at the forefront of this model, providing a certified mechanic and full-service shop in a van, which comes right to your door, so Dad can continue pulling raisins out of his kid’s nose instead of schlepping a flat Schwinn to the shop. With minimal overhead and a franchise model, both businesses are growing rapidly. So rapidly, in fact, that Beeline Bikes has now , owner of Raleigh and Redline, to build and deliver their bikes—purchased online—direct to your door. Imagine what will happen if they install an espresso machine.

Will we, a few years from now, reminisce about the smell of new tires and the sound of an air compressor burping from the repair section? Will we chat with the mobile mechanic about how we used to pull down the most expensive bike in the shop and feel, even for just a fleeting moment, what it would be like to own such a steed?Ěý

Here's the bottom line: to keep local retailersĚýaround, we're going to have to forget about price and instead put a premium on experience. The question is: Will we?Ěý

The post The Death of the Local Bike Shop appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.

The fear of becoming lost in the woods is primal. Maybe your GPS died on you; perhaps you took a side trail that disappeared into nothing, and now the meadow you’ve just come across looks eerily similar to one you passed through hours ago. But imagine you could close your eyes, calm your breath, and center your attention on a small pulse in your brain. You turn your head this way, then that, and feel this pulse grow strongest when your face is pointed just so. There, you sense: North.
Ěý
How it would feel to sense the earth’s magnetic field is wild conjecture, but according to a new experiment by Joe Kirschvink, geophysicist at Caltech who specializes in animal magnetoreception, we may already do so subconsciously. Magnetoreception, as the sense is called, is how birds and fish are able to navigate incredible distances with surprising accuracy. Kirschvink theorizes that magnetite, an iron crystal found in our brain, serves a similar purpose for us as it does for north-sensitive animals. No one, however, has yet been able to prove the biology.
Ěý
So Kirschvink set about to prove the behavior, instead. Previous experiments in the early eighties with humans failed to be conclusive or reproducible, creating false positives and cries of charlatanism. Kirschvink himself had criticized a 1980 study by Robin Baker, a biologist from the University of Manchester in the U.K. who took blindfolded subjects along winding country roads and then had them point to home. He claimed that a statistically significant number of subjects could do so, but the number fell dramatically when he placed magnets on their heads. Kirschvink, among others, could not repeat the findings in the U.S. One theory for this failure in reproducibility is that AM radio waves—a frequency range the U.K. doesn’t use—are very effective at interfering with the magnetic field.

To avoid similar failings in his own study, Kirschvink built what is called a faraday cage, which blocks out all electronic and magnetic interference. He placed subjects in the cage, fired up a series of electric coils to create artificial magnetic fields, and measured the subjects’ brainwaves on an electroencephalogram (EEG). Drops in alpha wave patterns are associated with mental processing, and this is precisely what Kirschvink found: consistent, reproducible drops in response to changes in the magnetic fields, the only variable in the experiment. Though the sample size was small—roughly two dozen—the results nonetheless open the door to what could be a new, or long dormant, human sensory ability.

That’s the short version, and the long version is . But it begs the question: so what? If this truly is a latent sense, silent for millennia but perhaps accessible with training, is it worth developing? Some recent studies in orientation suggest yes.
Ěý
A group of that blinded mice were able to navigate a maze with the same accuracy as sighted mice when they embedded an electronic compass into the mice’s visual cortex. Similarly, researchers at the University of Osnabrueck in Germany created a “” that continually notified the wearer of true north through vibrating motors placed around the belt. Blind test subjects reported a noticeable improvement in their ability to navigate known and unknown areas. Even more interesting, subjects stated that they very quickly stopped noticing the belt, and instead simply “sensed” north. It worked so well that they didn’t want to give the belt back.Ěý
Ěý
As a potential new sense that would be particularly beneficial to the blind, magnetoreception has interesting parallels to echolocation, which is the ability of humans to use sonar to map their environment. I reached out to Daniel Kish, founder of and pioneer in teaching echolocation to the blind. All humans have this ability, which centers on creating a loud sound—usually a sharp click with the tongue—that creates echoes that the brain uses to map objects in the environment. ĚýWhile Kish agreed that magnetoreception could be a welcome tool for the blind, the more interesting part of our conversation centered on echolocation’s history. Kish thinks it could serve as a primer for how a magnetic sense may go from the stuff of mystic psychobabble to a functional, teachable skill.
Ěý
“You have century upon century of echolocation not being understood,” Kish says. “It was well known that some blind people had an optical sense, but the way in which it was done was wildly speculative. It’s hard to teach something when you have no idea how it’s happening.” Scientists studied echolocation in animals as early as the 1940s, but one of the earliest on human echolocation didn’t appear until 2009. “But even so, it was not until very recently that a method of teaching it was developed. So it’s possible that magnetoreception is similar.”
Ěý
So perhaps, we mused, that person who never seems to get lost, or can park a car at Disneyland and walk straight to it when the day is over, is subconsciously tapping into the earth’s coordinates in the same way blind persons subconsciously sensed objects around them. Maybe the hiker who never needs to check the map, the husband who, honest to God, doesn’t have to ask for directions—perhaps they are the naturals. They just have a feeling, and can’t explain it beyond that. Research like Kirschvink’s may begin to show that such feelings aren’t a fluke, and from there it's possible that, like human sonar, we'll turn this latent ability into conscious behavior.
Ěý
The largest barrier to the sense being truly useful, however, may be human rather than scientific. The magnetic sphere is not a strong signal, and our civilization has flooded the environment with everyday electronics and radio frequencies that create interference. Dense, labyrinthine cities—the very places a person could most use an innate sense of magnetic north—are the very places where this skill would be least accessible. Unless, of course, you have a faraday cage you can take on the subway.
Ěý
But before the why, or even the how, Kisrchvink still needs to definitively prove that the sense is real at all, through repeated studies with larger samples. This has already begun: Researchers in Tokyo have shown similar EEG readings with their own faraday setup.
Ěý
In the meantime, if you find yourself lost and afraid in the woods, close your eyes. Focus. Chances are you won't feel a thing, but perhaps there's a small tingle between your eyes when you face just the right way. Maybe that's north.

You should still pack a compass, just in case.

The post Finding North Might Be Your Lost Sixth Sense appeared first on şÚÁĎłÔąĎÍř Online.