“The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost…For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of solitude and desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. And the color of where you can never go.”

I came across the book, “A Field Guide to Getting Lost” by Rebecca Solnit, in a bookshop when I was traveling alone in Oregon. The title of the book was what did it for me. I had spent the few days prior wandering the sprawling city of Portland without much of a plan, and the title seemed to capture the spirit of such exploration without expectation.

Since then, the book has been a companion on every trip I have made. Morning reading in a traditional Balinese house; flipping pages in between skipping stones along a riverbank in Taipei; half-reading and half-squinting in New York’s summer sunshine. It is reassuring to have a constant amidst the new and unfamiliar. Yet, it is a constant that engages me in a different conversation each time around.

Solnit is a prolific writer from San Francisco whose breadth and depth of writing has inspired comparisons with Susan Sontag. Her essays and books span the environment, politics, history, art and travel. Her writing meanders through these topics leisurely, as if their correlation is a given, but her points are always inspired and incisive. The confidence with which she moves across these different domains likely comes from her childhood growing up surrounded by nature, from her journalism experience in her adult years and from a general curiosity about the world. What distinguishes Solnit’s writing from other authors though, are her delicate, beautifully-crafted sentences that ensconce powerful ideas.

“A Field Guide to Getting Lost” provides a thought-provoking reflection of both Solnit’s writing style and interests. A Field Guide is a story of Solnit’s explorations across landscapes, across time and across genres. She shares personal narratives of loss, childhood, memory and discovery, while bringing in the views of philosophers, historians and random strangers whose words have moved her. Every other chapter is titled “The Blue of Distance”, and each explores a different facet of the theme. Blue of light and the horizon. Distance in exploration. The twang of the blues. The block colours of Yves Klein’s paintings. These chapters punctuate the flow of the book and remind the reader of the unexpected insights and associations that exist through discovery of the self and the world.

The intimacy of Solnit’s writing and her sensitivity for life’s nuances make this book feel like you have spent the afternoon catching up with a close friend. Reminiscing about childhood memories, talking about growing older, and everything in between. It is a conversation I know will continue through the years ahead.

Contributed by: Diana Ng