works of wanderlust

Tag: getting lost

  • purposefully lost

    It’s December and for me that means it is “blog every day month” an effort for which I have long since concocted a list of blog-able reflective topics called my December-ish posts each of which should do little more than offer a leaping off point for some rambling writing to fill up my daily blogging quota.

    Today that topic is…

    Compared to this time last year are you more lost or found?

    In accordance with the current theme and title of this blog, I will remind you that “not all who wander are lost” [J.R.R. Tolkien].

    However, I did kickstart this blog back to life in the early months of this year and landed on a theme and a title that relayed a sense of abstractly lacking direction, for better or worse—I suppose.

    Wandering can be a form of losing oneself in a familiar space, or it can be a directionless pursuit of the spontaneity of being purposefully adrift in a world of structure and plans and schedules and rules and… deep breath.

    I choose a bit of both. And for the most part as I wake up each day looking at the lack of clarity and direction in that moment, well, I don’t see it as lost, so much as existentially adrift.

    Yet, my life over the last few years has transitioned of one of structure, an over-packed meeting calendar and creeping project deadlines to something that is a little more digitally nomadic.  Though I may not necessarily wander in corpus, I have become something more of a wandering soul, seeking experience and inspiration around and about. In that sense I am far more lost from the structures of proper society than many of you may find comfortable for your own ways of being. It even makes my family a bit discombobulated sometimes as I embrace the day each and every morning with a lack of clarity of how those hours will be spent.

    On the other hand there is a formality of purpose in how I spend those days, and one that didn’t exist even a year ago. I have a small business to bolster.  I make for myself some pretty strict creative goals around writing and music and coding and art that are driving me purposefully forward towards a kind of personal productivity of being that I had a vague sense of last year, and so perhaps I’ve taken a more rigidly “found purpose” approach to this past twelve month. In that sense, alternatively, I find myself more “found” each day with that sense of purpose and pride and personal accomplishment.

    So how do I answer this particular question? Lost or found? Am I more found because of the strategic intent of my life or am I more lost because I’ve embraced a wandering affectation upon which to take the individual steps and moments of my days. I might suggest it balances out, but that is unsatisfying an answer as it is a cowardly reply. 

    What matters the most? I think the perception of the day-to-day is what matters to me right now. I can continue to wander comfortably because most people see me, know me, relate to me on a broader timescale: weekly run friends, quarterly visits with acquaintances, sporadic family get togethers. To them the data points of the wandering life is smoothed to a gentle upward curve of momentum and achievement, perhaps. And like any and many of us, we can embrace the rolling toils of our lives on the moment by moment perception of it in the closer packed analysis of those moments, and that is what matters to us—for me that is a perception of wandering and distraction and engaging with the flicker of something new and shiny on a horizon I may never reach, running down a trail that veers off from the obvious path, or waking up and not knowing where I’ll find myself by lunchtime.

    In other words, I’m a little bit more lost, but maybe that’s on purpose.

  • On Detours

    Sunday Runday and it felt a little like old times as we plodded through busy spring trails, dodging bikes, dog-walkers, and fellow runners along the river valley trails.

    A few of the run crew have found themselves in an urgent training predicament. With the local restrictions lifting quickly and thoroughly, an ultramarathon that most figured on being postponed again seems to be running. A few of the run crew signed up to do signficant distances through mountain paths. A few of the run crew need to get back to their 2020 stamina levels in the next few weeks. A few of the run crew are a bit panicked.

    Not me. I’m just enjoying my minimal-race summer agenda, but I promised to train with them all no matter what they need to accomplish.

    So we planned on a twelve to fourteen kilometer Sunday run.

    Plans don’t always work out.

    Busy trails. Improptu plans. Spontaneous pathfinding. These are the ingredients for adventure.

    The first ten kilometers went without a hitch. We climbed the aphalt ascent from where we’d met and parked our cars that morning, looped through a local park as we traversed the weaving network of winding paths. We crossed the river on the sidewalk portion of the new bridge stopping for a photo. And we traced the trail to the foot of another long hill…

    … where we stopped and contemplated our options.

    To the right an asphalt trail cluttered with people led on a long slow ascent out of the river valley to a familiar neighbourhood. To the left a narrow dirt path ducked under a guardrail and dropped along beside the river, showing no signs of human life.

    The trail was true for the first few minutes. Then deeper into the route bits of it were washed away from the spring runoff causing us to take careful footsteps along sloping, sanding ledges barely as wide as our shoes. A corner opened up into a mud pit, which we trod through with reluctance (and a few choice curse words) and led to a steep drop gleaming with a gaping outflow of slippery orange mud dropping off of a sharp ledge that fell three meters into the murky river water below.

    The six of us stopped and debated our options.

    We were now about half a kilometer down what seemed like either a risky or dead-end path, and the choice was to continue on and hope we weren’t further blocked ahead, or turn back and take the alternate route up the people-cluttered asphalt hill.

    Detours and tracking back on your path are unfortunate side effects of taking risks in running as in life. Is it better to cut your losses and try a different approach to get somewhere, or stubborningly forge on and hope for the best?

    As we traced back, climbed the hill and then found a path back into the valley that would eventually connect back up to the trail we’d lost we wondered how much our detour had cost us. I stopped my watch at sixteen kilometers as I hobbled back to my vehicle at the end of the run. It was a small bit more than I’d planned to run today… but also a whole lot more adventure, too.