Getting Lost

On Friday, I managed to get lost in Durham while following seemingly simple mapquest directions. One wrong turn and I found myself in a neighborhood of beautiful stately old homes, which I'm sure I'll never again be able to find.

Then yesterday, I got on my bike to ride over to campus to the Student Health Center. Yup, on the postdoc health plan, the trusty old student health center is once again my health provider, and I was on my way there to establish care. I got lost on campus, which unfortunately is much hillier than Davis. I did manage to find the Health Center, just completely by accident, after which I had to collapse on a park bench so I wouldn't pass out from the 30-minute top-gear up-and-down trek.

Lostness is relative. The tone of my confusion had none of the anxiety it had back in September. There were just enough elements of the familiar to feel like I wasn't really lost at all, and also a sense that at the end of the day, I would return to the familiar. A part of my internal conversation welcomed getting lost as a way of finding my way around.

When we left Davis, it felt achingly familiar, down to each pothole. I remember exactly where I would shift my bike gears, what street made crossing the railroad tracks most comfortable (fourth, bar none), I knew my bike lanes down to the potholes and the seams in the asphalt.

Perhaps being completely out of my old home range, getting lost on purpose so very far from home, is a great way of finding my way.