From the award-winning author of Orwell's Roses, a stimulating exploration of wandering, being lost, and the uses of the unknown
Written as a series of autobiographical essays, A Field Guide to Getting Lost draws on emblematic moments and relationships in Rebecca Solnit's life to explore issues of uncertainty, trust, loss, memory, desire, and place. Solnit is interested in the stories we use to navigate our way through the world, and the places we traverse, from wilderness to cities, in finding ourselves, or losing ourselves. While deeply personal, her own stories link up to larger stories, from captivity narratives of early Americans to the use of the color blue in Renaissance painting, not to mention encounters with tortoises, monks, punk rockers, mountains, deserts, and the movie Vertigo. The result is a distinctive, stimulating voyage of discovery.
"In this lyrical book, Solnit considers the virtues, the necessities even, of being lost. A book I often share with writing students, and return to again and again for sustaining guidance on how to be a writer, and how to be a person."
Multidisciplinary Software Designer
That thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you is usually what you need to find, and finding it is a matter of getting lost. — Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
author of While I Walk ✏️ Hiker 🥾 Reader, dog mom, and vegan
“Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.” ― Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost #Nature #Wildlife #Hiking https://t.co/Taz4QFWYrX
"Solnit has been compared to both Annie Dillard and Susan Sontag . . . her own work resembles a richly conceived character, capable of sudden turns and sharp twists, changing direction from book to book and page to page in ways that, in retrospect, are nevertheless consistent with what she's done before. [A Field Guide to Getting Lost] has something close to perfect pitch, an intermezzo in an increasingly impressive career."
--The Nation
"An altogether sublime collection. . . she sees in the act of embracing the unknown a gateway to self-transcendence."
--Maria Popova, Brainpickings.org
"This indespensable California writer's most personal book yet, alive as ever to the subtle nuances of the natural world, but newly responsive to the promptings of her own heart and history."
--San Fransisco Chronicle
"This meditation on the pleasures and terrors of getting lost is . . . a series of peregrinations, leading the reader to unexpected vistas."
--The New Yorker
"An ode to losing yourself and finding out what's on the other side of familiarity. For Ms. Solnit . . . getting lost is more than a matter of merely physical circumstances. It's a state of mind to be embraced and explored, a gateway to discovering more about yourself in relation to the rest of the world."
--The Dallas Morning News