A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Solnit opens the chapter with a story from her childhood. During Passover, her family put out a glass of wine for the prophet Elijah. Young Rebecca drank Elijah’s wine and became tipsy. Another component of the Jewish Passover tradition is leaving the door open for Elijah to enter. Solnit cannot recall whether her family left the door open for Elijah, but she uses the image of the open door to explore what it symbolizes: An invitation for something new and unexpected, a transformation.

Solnit interrogates what it means to search for something that is elusive. She provides examples of thinkers and writers, like John Keats, Edgar Allan Poe, and J. Robert Oppenheimer, who recognized the importance of engaging with the unforeseen and mysterious. Solnit compares this experience to getting lost, something she considers synonymous with embracing the unknown. The mysterious, unknown parts of life are typically those which are most needed, and the only way to find them is to allow oneself to be lost.

The word “lost” comes from the Old Norse los which describes the disbanding of an army, likely to return home. Solnit worries that modern life has caused people to avoid disbanding their armies.