A Field Guide to Getting Lost

A wandering text... some lines or paragraphs were tremendous. Had to stop and take notes. Lines that really spoke something I could never put words to before. But I also felt a bit like Alice being given stories that didn't help me navigate Wonderland but instead made me feel sorry for those creatures who'd already been here for such a long time.

I liked it very much, but it's not a book to rush through–lots of interesting reflections to ponder. Also not a book to read in bed at night, because the sentences can be quite meditative.

“raises free association to a fine art” notes a San Francisco Chronicle review on the back cover - This book is a meander on the topic of getting/being lost, on losing, on loss, and the colour blue. The structure is a little fuzzy, it loops back around on itself some. Lots of lovely phrases and thoughts encapsulated, but not a quick read by any means.

I read this book to help me get into the mood to travel–I have a conference to go to in another state but I am a notorious homebody who would usually prefer to stay in my familiar city. Or, if I have to go somewhere new, I want to be able to get home in time for dinner. Rebecca Solnit's book fit the bill perfectly. She presented me with people who were lost for so long that even though they never got back home, they ceased to be lost. And with the myth of a woman who disappeared into the prairie on her way West to meet her husband after immigrating from her home country (it turns out, the real story of her disappearance is different and far less beautiful). Each essay approaches the concept of being lost in a different way, and each essay contains threads of other stories that are connected to lostness in surprising ways. These essays are intricate, beautiful and worth contemplating. I had never read Solnit before, but I am now a big fan.

Personal and philosophical meditations on what it means to get lost, to lose, to encounter the unknown. How we label unexplored places unknown territories on maps, yet still fill them with our fear and imagination instead of leaving them blank. The color blue runs through the book like a red thread. The blue of distance, of longing, blue as the color of the horizon, the light that got lost, dispersed. Other cultures don't get lost, they wander. Losing oneself as rite of passage. Embracing mystery, uncertainty, the unknowable, that what can't be possessed.

You can get lost in this book, in her stories, her meanderings around the subject, elegant and subtle, lyrical and personal, evocative and elusive, yet grounded in places, cities and wilderness. Relationships, memoires, anecdotes.