Lately I’ve been feeling a little lost. By a little lost, I mean that frustrated, wind-blew-my-map-off-the-side-of-this-mountain, blisters-on-my-heels-and-no-end-in-sight, hit-a-bump-in-the-road-and-spilled-my-latte-all-over-my-atlas brand of lost. And don’t get me wrong–a spoiled map is a beautiful thing to tuck into a shoebox one day. If you did happen to spill your coffee, the ink percolating through paper veins may even lend resemblance to abstract works that the MoCA would be clambering to get their paws on. However, what your map will have trouble doing, is getting you from Point A to Point B.
The funny thing about being lost, is that the first question people feel the need to ask you is: “Where are you?”
People always ask this first, and it is the most wonderful and the most frustrating question in this whole wide world.
Wonderful, because the reason people will ask, is that they love you, and will drop absolutely everything in their hands to come pick you up.
Frustrating, because the question usually results in me frantically looking around, licking my thumb and holding it up to the breeze, lifting up my cracked compass like a cell phone with no service–hoping maybe if I just tilt it a little to the left and stand on tip toes, the Earth’s magnetic fields might cooperate and bend the little arrows to point homewards.
The other funny thing about being lost, is that it is the most exhilarating, adventurous, terror that one can really traipse into. One moment I’ll have stumbled upon the most wonderful view of mountains, valleys, and sun-soaked islands. The next, I’ll be digging around in my pack for more moleskin to save my scrawny ankles from the bite of my boots.
All in all, I’ve found that being lost is a blessing in itself because it means I’m moving forward.
This weekend a kindred soul and I decided to lose ourselves in the expanses of a national forest. The first day, we were so excited about the journey, that we left a little more than we normally would up to chance. We decided to hike straight to the coast from the center of the park. Ten miles later, we were standing on Atlantic cliffs debating the direction of the tide. Ten minutes after that, we were reaching realization that the bus network did not begin to run until later in the summer and that the blessing of a technology-hiatus could simultaneously be a bit of a hindrance. Ten minutes after that, we were running through which options would land us in front of a lobster in the shortest amount of time.
We wandered back along the shore path to the closest hiker’s center– discussing the possibility of trying our hands at hitchhiking, estimating the time it would take to walk to the car, drawing hiking trails with the pads of our fingers and finally, speculating how long it might take to run to the car in hiking boots…
As we finally approached the center, we caught a glimpse of a young couple trying desperately to use their cell phone which was somehow cooperating the slightest bit more than either of our own. I sat down on a tree trunk and waited for my hiking partner to fill his Nalgene.
He jogged down the slight incline with a brave face on, prepared to run. I jokingly held up my useless phone; suggesting we hail a cab.
As if by divine intervention, we heard the crunch of gravel and watched in suspended disbelief as a clunky minivan stuttered into the drive. The young couple in front of us leapt up as the two of us began elbowing one another furiously between whispers of “You ask!”
The window keeled down exhaustedly to the steely drawl of Neil Young. A hairy bear of an arm leaned across the passenger seat, jostling the handful of lanyards swinging from the rearview. “You all need to get into town too?”
Maybe sometimes being lost is just where we need to be.
Maybe even when we do have the map and do have our arrows pointing home and are just too exhausted to imagine making it there–rendering our maps as good as useless–maybe that is when we are gifted a lesson in faith.
So where am I?
I’m lost. I wish I could tell you where I am and how to find me, but if I knew those answers, I wouldn’t be here in the first place.
Just stay on the path and keep calling to me, I’ll follow your voice and meet you there.