There is much to be said for getting lost. Currently, I’m trying to embrace it. Speaking as someone who could at best be described as “challenged” when it comes to road-mapping and a general sense of direction, I am endeavouring to develop my confidence when it comes to striding forth onto a footpath and seeing where it takes me.
Now, you won’t catch me following track-markings or the direction of the sun. That would just be madness. Unlike my father, who is part modern man, part hunter-gatherer, I have no primeval skills. My father instinctively knows which direction he is walking in, and when he looks at the landscape he sees not only what’s beneath it (I see an uninspiring grassy hill, he sees an iron-age settlement) but also how it integrates with the horizon and frankly the universe. He’s a big thinker, my father, and he combines it with a primordial response to his surroundings. He’s one stage away from sniffing the air and identifying the time of day from the ions.
Sadly, I did not inherit the walkabout gene and if you dropped me into the outback I would survive less than half an hour. I am, it is fair to say, embarassingly useless when it comes to any kind of orienteering. When I go walking, you’ll see me anxiously clutching my smart phone and peering at Apple maps, while flirting also with the Ordnance survey app (I don’t really understand it) and an app designed by The Ramblers Association, my membership of which has caused great hilarity among friends and family. With all of this magic in my hand, I still tend to set off in the wrong direction. It is seriously annoying.
Recently, my husband and I have had the joy of befriending a local dog, whom we met (along with her owners) through a website called Borrow My Doggy. If you’re interested in spending time with dogs but don’t feel able to commit to one for yourself, I can highly recommend it, with one caveat: if you’ve done any kind of internet dating before, you will get horrible flashbacks. I certainly did. The entire premise of the site works like a dating app, matching you up with potential dogs and using all the same language that you find on dating apps (albeit at the tamer end of that market: we’re not talking Grindr). You’ll experience the same highs and lows: oh! He’s gorgeous and looks perfect! Oh no, he’s been on here for more than a year, he’s probably taken. You’ll send out an enthusiastic message to what looks like your perfect match and he’ll never respond. Oh, the agony.
Anyway, once you’ve got beyond feeling triggered, you might get lucky and find a dog. I did! I found a lovely golden retriever, living barely half a mile away. The dog is perfect for us, as I haven’t owned one since I was a child and my husband has no experience, other than being an avid watcher of Dogs Behaving Badly. But our match is beautifully trained and responds perfectly to commands, so she’s great for us to practise our skills on. She is also an absolute delight, in that way that only dogs can be. She demonstrates the sheer, immense joy of simply going for a walk in natural surroundings. Watching her sniffing her way around the common and rolling about in a meadow have been some of the loveliest moments I have experienced in a long time.
This week, my husband and I are in Cornwall (sadly, not with the dog), staying in St Ives and spending some time with my husband’s sister, who lives in Penzance. Happily, she does have a dog! Both my husband and I have happy memories of Cornwall from childhood. His grandparents were Cornish and once owned a farm down there, while I have fond memories of staying in Cornwall while my parents, who met through acting, were in a production of Macbeth at The Minack, a quite remarkable outdoor theatre located around 4 miles from Lands End. So, we’re busy getting lost in the west country, making good albeit amateurish use of the Ramblers map and experiencing one of the most glorious coastlines of our beautiful country. It is easy to forget the genuine wonders that the UK has to offer, when it is so simple to fly elsewhere.
Getting lost can be surprisingly enjoyable. It shakes up your routine and forces you to rely on your wits (however inadequate), which can be a little bit thrilling. Stumbling upon new places that you wouldn’t have found otherwise can also be something of an unplanned adventure: I have started to learn more about the geography of where we live by happening upon paths that I didn’t know existed. There’s a sense of discovery and spontaneity that comes with it, rather like solving a mystery or exploring a puzzle. Mindfulness is currently a massive trend and nothing focuses the mind or forces you to pay close attention to your surroundings quite like getting lost in the country. Just make sure you take your Kendal mint cake with you.
