Get Lost

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Photo by Mumemories - Getty Images

Man backpacking in the Swiss Alps

Near as I could figure, it had been an hour since I'd known my location. I was hiking off trail, and the floor of the forest was crackling dry, so there was no retracing my steps, and the dense overcast prevented any solar fix on my heading. I followed a deer trail for a time, but it ended abruptly at the edge of a cedar bog.

I leaned against a white pine and smiled to myself.

“I’ve done it,” I thought. “I have no idea where I am.”

My affinity for getting lost is a reaction against being found so much of the time. Phone calls, texts, emails, location apps, GPS; they all seem to know where I am. 

While there may be those who argue I am lost in a spiritual sense, in most other respects I am intensely found. So, when my foundation becomes too secure, I get lost.

Find Yourself?      

Strange as it may sound, a good place to get lost is hard to find. Our ancestors could just stagger out of the cave or hogan, wander off in any direction and, with a little carelessness, become swallowed up by the wilderness.

In fact, many of them viewed aimless treks in the wild as a way to find themselves in a metaphysical sense. Many prophets embraced getting lost geographically as a prerequisite for being found spiritually.

While some may find disorientation in a shopping mall a mystical experience, I prefer lonely locations such as forests, marshes, mountains, large bodies of water, huge fields of high corn, and back road mazes far from major highways. Obviously, getting lost in certain locales, such as the wilderness, is not without risks, so anyone doing so needs to respect their limits in this regard.

Becoming spatially disoriented in the Midwest can be challenging, but with considerable effort I've managed to do so in Kettle Moraine Forest, the Sylvania Wilderness, some large parks along the Mississippi River and, when the fog has been thick enough, while sailing Lake Michigan. When I was a resident of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, getting lost was easy. Becoming found again was tougher.

Temporary Disappearance

The first time I became truly lost was in a thick-as-mud forest in northern Minnesota. It was the sort of topography where you could meander for days, or until a hunter might come across your corpse, so I found the experience unnerving. On that occasion, I swallowed hard on my panic and let my intuition lead the way. Obviously, it did.

When I do manage to get lost on purpose, I linger peacefully in the safety of temporary disappearance, happy to be beyond the reach of the human world with its insistence that we always be findable. One of the great pleasures of this approach is discovery, happening upon new places, having little adventures, awakening old senses that have grown numb in the din of modern mayhem.

For instance, I've noticed that when I'm lost in the woods, animals come closer. They seem less intimidated by a befuddled person. This has granted me some close encounters with all sorts of creatures, including owls, deer, black bear, coyotes, snakes and small varmints.

However, you don't have to plunge into the wilderness to lose your way on our planet's surface. Like almost everything else we Americans do, getting lost in a vehicle is an option. Just carve out a half-day or more, take off in any direction, show a preference for back roads and turn whichever way looks most confusing.

Stop when you find something interesting, such as a small-town restaurant, a park, a nature center, an old downtown, auction, local museum, flea market or a child's lemonade stand. When you get lost, you temporarily lose your life as it is and find a piece of how it could be. That's worth some disorientation.

So, if you're bored, too predictable, too stable or too found, do what your older sister or brother once told you.

Get lost. 

For more, visit philipchard.com.