viii, 307 pp. As a young man piloting a small sailboat across the Pacific, Steve Thomas developed a fascination with ancient methods of navigation. He learned of a seafaring culture which, 6,000 years ago, used arcane navigation arts to guide initiates unerringly across the Pacific with no compasses, no charts. By the time of Christ, these navigators had populated Oceania, nearly a quarter of the Earth’s surface. Thomas ventured to the tiny coral atolls of Micronesia in search of these mysteries, this ancient language of the sea. There he found the last navigator, Mau Piailug. One of the few surviving palu, he belongs to a dying breed who used only natural signs - stars, waves, birds - to guide their sailing canoes across thousands of miles of open ocean. Thomas and Piailug voyage together on the frail ship of human memory in an attempt to preserve for future generations an ancient, mysterious, and beautiful kinship with the sea before it is lost forever. Theirs is an unforgettable journey.
