I often tell people that coming up with the actual idea for the writing of an essay or short story is half the battle. Once that happens, the fight is won and the actual writing turns out to be the fun part of the process. One of the writing related publications I subscribe to is called, “Writers Ask”. The interview with a fiction writer named Stephanie Soileau about Storytelling technique had her comment that, “The best fiction gives us a woods to get lost in.” Non-fiction being very similar to fiction writing in many respects had me thinking about the quote and suddenly gave me the idea for the following essay. Once that took place the writing just flowed from there. Here’s the result.

Word Count: 1165

The Beauty of

Getting Lost

I’m a big fan of inspirational quotes. When I reached the satellite bunker at the top of the Stairway to Heaven staircase while in Hawaii last month, I noticed an Aldous Huxley statement painted on the wall inside that I found quite promising. After catching my breath, I immediately whipped out my Smart Phone and took a picture of the citation. This resulted in me getting more excited about the words of the statement than most toddlers when they visit a Chunky Cheese restaurant for a birthday party, “The secret of genius is carrying the spirit of the child into old age. Old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.” Now the jury is still out as to whether or not I’m a genius (probably not), but this statement does justify my childlike and simplistic outlook when it comes to a so many things in life.

One of my favorite quotes happens to be a line from the poem, “All that is Gold does not Glitter.” By J.R.R. Tolkien. The quote: “Not all those who wander are lost.” This crystallizes so much of my outlook on many adventures in life. Everybody deviates from the norm in some way (“thinking outside the box,” as it were), but in many cases you don’t always vanish. You know exactly where you’re going, but sometimes you’re just taking an interesting sidetrack on the road to your ultimate destination.

This reminds me of an adventure from my youth. While visiting family in Denver, we made a trip to the Japanese Cultural Center downtown. This presented me with the perfect opportunity to check out a comic book store I’d read about. Immediately I looked at a map of the city and decided I’d frequent the establishment. Turns out the institution was at the opposite end of the downtown area from the Cultural Center, and required walking for about an hour just to get there. No problem as far as that goes; I was a teenager, strong, determined to reach my ultimate destination, didn’t know any of the city bus routes, and basically dumb. Vanished when we turned a corner, and started my journey.

I eventually reached the store and ended up spending the requisite $15.00 to $20.00 to purchase the latest graphic adventures, and then started walking back towards where I figured the family was. When I returned to our group, everyone breathed a sigh of relief and told me I could’ve gotten lost. Actually that was my original intent, wasn’t it?

The number of times I’ve wander off, thus giving people the impression that I was lost, but really wasn’t, are endless. While visiting a buddy from Peace Corps who lives in Malaysia, a side trip to the Thai. Border town of Kota Baru had me deliberately walking out of my way just so I could figure out how to get back on track and get a better feel for the place. Didn’t really get lost, but who’s keeping track in this particular instance?

Getting lost while hiking here in the San Juan Mountains isn’t always so much fun. You end up going on a trail way off your final objective, and oftentimes have to bushwhack through some heavily vegetated terrain to get back on track. Once, myself and a friend wanted to get to an above timberline lake in order to do some fishing, but took the wrong trail and found ourselves way off course on an adjacent ridge. We knew where we were ultimately going to go, but taking that sidetrack took us slightly out of the way and ended up tacking an extra five or ten miles to the trek.

This also happened while climbing Mt. Kenya in Africa, and getting lost while trekking in tropical environments is even more of an inconvenience. You ever bushwhacked your way through an extra dense bamboo forest? I did, and looking back at the experience in retrospect, it was more painful than a visit to the neighborhood dentist whose got a sadistic streak.

Now getting lost while trekking in the city can also be a fun experience. While attending a writer’s conference in San Francisco, I found myself with some extra time to kill, and deliberately walked out of my way while returning to the subway station that day just so I could see some new terrain and have an adventure. This was also the case while visiting Minneapolis, where I walked an extra five miles instead of taking the city bus back to my buddies’ house in St. Paul. Got some extra exercise out of the experience, and we can definitely conclude that you don’t really need a fancy-ass, expensive treadmill. Besides, the treadmill eventually gets used as a surrogate clothing rack in these situations anyway.

The all time most memorable lost experience happened when I was a kid. It wasn’t so much fun when the incident took place, but the memory sticks out like a traumatic time-out session all these years later.

During a family vacation to the Left Coast, we paid a visit to Marine World in Los Angeles. One of the things we took in was the Killer Whale show. This was of course before the days of the “Blackfish” documentary revelations, and even if the documentary had been made fifty-three years ago, I doubt it would’ve had much of an effect on my five-year-old mind.

We sat in the stands a few rows from the front and got a full view of the action. Got totally wet from the back splash, and I loved it. After the show ended, I walked to the front and looked longingly into the water. Upon turning around to compare notes with my older sisters, I suddenly discovered that everyone in the family had disappeared. Right off the bat, tears welled up inside me and I did the obligatory water works display. After all, wouldn’t every kid upon discovering that they were going to spend the rest of their life as a homeless street urchin?

Soon, I heard a booming voice over the water park’s intercom saying, “lost child-David Swanson”. Then this guy in a Sea World jacket walked up to me and asked if my name happened to be David Swanson. I smiled, replied yes, grabbed the stranger’s hand, and accompanied him to a downstairs office. The rest of the family soon came walking in the door of the conference room we were sitting in, everyone began celebrating, and all was right with the world once again.

That night as I slipped into the warm embrace of sleep, I thought about events of the day. Suddenly discovering that I’d been abandoned was a terrible turn of events that I had no desire to re-experience. On the other hand, this getting lost thing was pretty neat. Gives you a unique perspective on the world, and opens up all sorts of new horizons. I’ll have to experience it again-how cool is that?