A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit

I imagine her getting lost in thought as well. It’s understood that taking leave of the modern world is a requirement to research the explorers and mapmakers from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as Solnit does. Writing requires substantial solitude, which often comes paired with adventure that leads the writer away from the familiar.

Roughly halfway through the collection she reminds us, “Reading and writing are largely private and solitary experiences.” “Never to get lost is not to live, not to know how to get lost brings you to destruction, and somewhere in the terra incognito in between lies a life of discovery.” She’s chosen a life of getting lost and by reading her work, we have chosen to get lost with her-though in each of these journeys we are still alone. “The question then is how to get lost,” she says. But as Solnit discloses in one deeply personal passage after another, getting lost is a necessary pursuit if we wish to gain some kind of insight into ourselves and the people we’ve known. This book goes even further: while reading it, I began to reflect on how hard it is to get lost (in any sense of the word) in 2017. Solnit’s previous work, in Harper’s and elsewhere, always caused me to think freshly about something I thought I knew. While much of Solnit’s reflections take place out of doors, the book’s focus is on getting lost in the emotional sense.

Prior to reading her collection of essays, I had assumed it was about getting lost in the physical sense, for the sake of exploring and enjoying the natural world. OL15273770W Page_number_confidence 82.76 Pages 234 Partner Innodata Pdf_module_version 0.0.15 Ppi 360 Rcs_key 24143 Republisher_date 20210901132732 Republisher_operator Republisher_time 247 Scandate 20210826231743 Scanner Scanningcenter cebu Scribe3_search_catalog isbn Scribe3_search_id 9780670034215 Tts_version 4.For a long time, Rebecca Solnit’s 2005 A Field Guide to Getting Lost sat on my nightstand. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 08:06:40 Boxid IA40225308 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier

A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit