Lost/Not Lost

Getting lost, without being lost

Mar 12, 2022

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I have my modest share of challenges: Unruly eyebrows, the inability to reach anything on a high shelf, and the lack of attention required to get through Lincoln in the Bardo. I fight these flaws the best I can, but there is one challenge I own with a vengeance: I have no sense of direction.

I’m not saying I have a bad sense of direction. I have no sense of direction. None.

For someone who always wanted to go places in life, actually arriving at any particular destination has always been an open question.

Because of this, I am extremely anxious whenever I leave home, and always careful.

Some years back, I was asked to give a speech at a ballroom deep within a casino building in Las Vegas.

The day before the event, I practiced the walking route from my hotel room to the venue, which was in the same building. And — even with practice — I almost didn’t arrive.

I am currently on my winter walkabout tour, when I leave home (where I know where everything is) for a few weeks and experience solo time, without my familiar compass and crutches.

I’ve come to New Mexico – a very large state ringed by mountain ranges, with tons of open space and a deficit of landmarks that might be discernible to a panicked wanderer.

[photo by Amy]

My adventure in losing my way started with me trying to leave my comfort zone, armed only with a paper map and a vague idea of seeing something amazing.

It ended with me enjoying a “Blizzard” at a truck stop Dairy Queen in the middle of the Navajo Nation.

Leaving my airport hotel in Albuquerque, I spontaneously decided to take a detour from the route north to Taos, in order to visit Chaco Canyon – a place I had learned about from a coffee table book in the hotel’s lounge the night before.

Fun Fact: “Today the massive buildings of the Ancestral Puebloan people still testify to the organizational and engineering abilities not seen anywhere else in the American Southwest.” {National Park Service Website}

Another Fun Fact:

“The northern and southern routes include 13, 20, and 33 miles of dirt roads, respectively. These sections of road are infrequently maintained, and they can become impassable during inclement weather.” {National Park Service Website}

I entered the Navajo Nation on the one Interstate that passes through this section of the 27,000 square miles of Navajo land. The terrain is high desert – desolate, dry, and – on this day – pocked with patches of snow.

I turned off the highway, taking the only road I could see that led off to the East, toward where I discerned the ancient site would be.

That’s when my (terrible) instincts took over.

Suffice it to say that for the next several hours I wandered through this landscape, armed only with my paper map and a sense that I was trespassing over territory where I had no passport and no right to roam.

Over the next five hours I saw only three pickup trucks – all headed in the opposite direction.

{Photo by Amy}

With no cell service, I turned on the car radio to the only available station: KNDN, which was playing a mix of “Hot Country” hits and mesmerizing Navajo chants.

This … was something. Describing the experience as “magical” seems to impose a set of cultural assumptions onto a culture I know nothing about. And yet — that’s how it felt to me in the moment.

I thought of that great line from Sherman Alexie’s “Smoke Signals”:

“We are all traveling heavy with illusions.”

My own illusions included the idea that, with enough practice, I would always find my way.

Instead, in this moment, with the timeless sound of throaty chants echoing through my rental car, I decided to lean in to being lost. Wandering — is something I never do, but I think I need to wander more.

Sometimes — I need to let the road take me where the road is going, not where I’m going.

At one point in my ramblings, the road rose, providing some elevation and the opportunity to scan the landscape. In the far distance, I saw the point where my two-lane road connected with the interstate.

I drove toward it. There at the junction was a big gas station/”trading post.” I gassed up, parked, and walked into the trading post, which featured the sorts of things that tourists frequently buy: commemorative shot glasses, T-shirts, and moccasins.

In the far corner was a small Dairy Queen, crowded with families and fellow travelers. As far as I could tell, I was the only white person there, and I sat quietly stirring my Blizzard and listening with total contentment to the ordinary human interchange of people who, like me — like all of us — are just passing through.

I believe this modern-day monument to everyday humanity may have been what I was looking for, all along.

Click here to hear a Navajo "night chant," which is performed in wintertime and celebrates hibernation.

DEPARTMENTS

Railey Jane Savage’s JUNK FOOD: Stuff I Consume to Feel Better

Railey writes:

“Miyazaki. My, oh my.

By the time my sibs were born I was already a highly opinionated young person, so they were reared on whatever I happened to be watching at any given moment. A lot had changed in my life—new house, new dad, new sibs—but I remained thoroughly myself through it all. Un/fortunately for my siblings this meant they were exposed to fringy things from early on.

And in the mid-90s, Hayao Miyazaki was not a household name in central New York. It wasn’t until 1999 that Studio Ghibli's films traveled from Japan to be released in American theatres, and 2001’s Spirited Away cemented Miyazaki’s spot in the global film scene. Somehow, in 1997 I had a dubbed copy of My Neighbor Totoro that was played at least weekly on our giant tube set. I loveloveloved the movie and couldn’t believe no one had heard of it.

Folks: This movie is a treasure. And an ideal gateway film to the rest of the Miyazaki catalogue. Though the story is about a pair of sisters who are befriended by a giant spirit of the forest, the themes speak to the heart of human experience: family, love, ecology, self-respect. And these themes are carried throughout Miyazaki’s films, and almost always through a girl protagonist. The girls in these movies are smart and resourceful as they are thrust into unexpected challenges on terrain both familiar, and strange. That is, we follow these girls through inflection points when they must retain their self-awareness as circumstances change around them; they tackle the unfamiliar to keep and protect their sense of self because, ultimately, the self is HOME."

I’m not animated (alas), but Miyazaki’s girls spoke to me across language, culture, and distance. My family had changed shape. I was in a new house. I was suddenly connected to tiny babies. But Totoro remained, and then became a shared touchstone for the grown family. It would have been easy to feel lost in the shuffle during so much change, but I didn’t. And I wasn’t. I hadn’t lost anything through these changes but, rather, had gained a family group to love and share with.

And by the time my sibs had become highly opinionated young people themselves I’d ask them which Miyazaki they wanted to watch, to which they would reply, All of them! But Totoro first.”

(Railey Jane Savage is the author of A Century of Swindles: Ponzi Schemes, Con Men, and Fraudsters, now available.)

Laura Likes: Where my friend Laura recommends great things:

Laura writes:
”If you are drifting, if you need a break, if you need something that you can't identify, I want you to remember that art and poetry and the work of writers are all always there for you.

The interesting thing to me about finding oneself is that it, as a matter of course, presupposes that one might be lost in the first place.

My immediate thoughts on the issue begin and end with Dante.

If you went to a public school in the U.S., at least, it's likely that your first exposure to The Divine Comedy was the Longfellow translation:

Midway upon the journey of our life,

I found myself within a forest dark,

For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

...and thus we begin the journey through hell, then purgatory, and finally to paradise. The point is, one has to keep going.

{“The Gathering of Poets: Inferno, by Gustave Doré.}

Now, I myself am fond of Stanley Lombardo's translation (full disclosure: Dr. Lombardo was one of my teachers when I was an undergraduate, but I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it).

I understand that for some this is a fraught question; people get very possessive about their favorite translations (some say Singleton, some like Mandelbaum, the Hollanders have their devotees, and plenty of people are wild about the John Ciardi), and I didn't come here to fight.

I actually have copies of all of these versions, because I am the sort of person who does that sort of thing. If you haven't read this work, find a translation you like and give it a try.

What I actually wanted to recommend to you today is that you seek out and take a look at the illustrations for The Divine Comedy, made by Gustave Doré.

{Dante kneeling before celestial helmsmen, Purgatory, by Gustave Doré}

Doré's drawings for Inferno were first published in 1861, with Purgatorio and Paradiso in 1868. You can find them many places online -- you might be surprised at how many of them you already know you've seen.

They've become iconic, in many ways. This one's my favorite.

{Dante and Beatrice gaze upon the highest Heaven, The Empyrean, by Gustave Doré.}

I mention all of this just to say: It's nice to take a break and just look at art, or read something you've never tried, or perhaps forgotten about.

It's easy to forget amidst the hubbub of life that these works exist and are available. Take ten minutes and see what the seed kernel of "being lost" inspired, now centuries down the line.

Astonishing, isn't it?”