A Field Guide to Getting Lost

This chapter centers on Solnit’s immigrant ancestors and their stories—especially her grandmother and great-grandmother—and on what can and can’t be recovered of their stories. Much of Solnit’s ancestral history is lost: “Things in my family have a way of disappearing” (43). She recalls sitting with her aunt, looking through a box of old family photographs. In one picture, Solnit’s grandmother and her two siblings are standing together at Ellis Island. Their heads are shaved, and the three children share the same hollow expression. When Solnit mentioned the box of photographs to her aunt later, she was told the box never existed. Another time, Solnit learned that the box was lost.

Solnit explains that the lost photographs symbolize the fragmented history of her family. Her grandparents emigrated from Bialystok during World War II. Solnit’s father and family members rarely spoke of the past, as though by never mentioning it, they could leave it behind. The story of her ancestors’ emigration came to Solnit over the years in fragments, each piece challenging the one before it. Solnit’s great-grandfather traveled to Los Angelas with his three children, leaving his wife behind.

In one story, Solnit’s great-grandmother made it to Los Angelas, only to discover that her husband had married an American woman who was now raising their children as her own. He placed his first wife in a mental asylum in California. In another version, she never left Russia and was instead institutionalized there. Like her mother, Solnit’s grandmother was institutionalized in California. Solnit recalls visiting her grandmother as a young girl, making daisy chains on the lawn of the institution. Although doctors diagnosed her with schizophrenia, Solnit wonders whether it is more likely she had post-traumatic stress disorder from her challenging life.

Solnit grounds her ancestral tales with another image of landscape. She describes visiting New Mexico and walking toward blue mountains in the distance. Her experience reminds her of a quote by a Tibetan sage: “Emptiness is the track on which the centered person moves” (48). The word “track” is shul in Tibetan, a word that means a mark that is left behind after something has left it, like a footprint. The track becomes a guidepost, indicating both what is gone and where to go. For Solnit, her grandmother and great-grandmother represent this idea, leading her to embrace the unknown.

When Solnit’s aunt was about to pass away, the author drove to her home and stayed with her till her death. She took her aunt to the river, remembering the significance of rivers for the end of life. A few days after her passing, the lost photographs arrived at a cousin’s house. They looked different from Solnit’s memory of them.