Out of the Woods Quotes

“What had happened was this: I fell out of my own map. It's an easy thing to do, especially in middle age, but really it can happen at any time. We all live by different lights - success, for some, desire for others - and take our bearings along different dreams. Some of us fly west with the night, into the unknown, urged on by adventure; others look only for the harbor lights, and stay safely in sight of home. But whichever way we choose, we come to rely on the sameness of our days, on the fact that for years at a time the road ahead looks much like the road behind, the horizon clear, the obstacles negotiable. And yet from time to time we stumble into wilderness. It can happen to anyone, at any age: the graduate putting away the cap and gown, the fifty-five-year-old rereading the layoff notice, the wife staring at the empty side of the still-warm bed. Now what? they whisper as they look ahead to a place where the landmarks disappear, and the map reads TERRA INCOGNITA.”
― Lynn Darling, Out of the Woods: A Memoir of Wayfinding

“But when I thought about love, I thought about this: my husband was the only man who had ever seen me for who I was and didn't blink, the only one I had loved the same way, the one who survived the myth I first made of him, and let me in. We had been able to be ourselves with each other: that was all.”
― Lynn Darling, Out of the Woods: A Memoir of Wayfinding

“But the disastrous walk reminded me that I had reached an age where only careful planning and a steady eye would keep me safe - in the woods, and in my life. I needed to stay alert, to find my bearings, if I was to avoid wasting time walking in circles. I couldn't stumble into old age the way I had through my front door, not quite knowing how I got there. And yet, in a way that I could not define, the best of me - as well as the worst - was inextricably tied up with a love of the accidental and unexpected. I had never been the sort of person who made five-year plans, or saved for a mortgage, or even kept a date book. I admired people like that, I envied them, but I had never wanted to be like them. I had led a life in which I had made few thoughtful decisions, and yes, it had cost me dearly in many ways, but it had also brought me a great happiness, and in the end it was simply who I was. For me, the miraculous had forever been bound up in the random; what if the elements crucial to growing old in a way that wasn't self-deluded were antithetical to what I needed to be happy?”
― Lynn Darling, Out of the Woods: A Memoir of Wayfinding