A Field Guide to Getting Lost

by Rebecca Solnit

Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration—how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory, about becoming someone else?

In Wintu, it’s the world that’s stable, yourself that’s contingent, that’s nothing apart from its surroundings.

Sometimes gaining and losing are more intimately related than we like to think.

Instar implies something both celestial and ingrown, something heavenly and disastrous, and perhaps change is commonly like that, a buried star, oscillating between near and far.

Movies are made out of darkness as well as light; it is the surpassingly brief intervals of darkness between each luminous still image that make it possible to assemble the many images into one moving picture. Without that darkness, there would only be a blur.