lost at home

I was reading Rebecca Solnit’s Field Guide to Getting Lost on a recent trip to my ‘home/birth’ province. It seemed apt.

While she has many thoughts and examples of what lostness is her thoughts on blueness stayed with me as I visited the Maniototo. Blueness signifies distance she says “But in this world we actually live in, distance ceases to be blue when we arrive in it. The far becomes the near and they are not the same place” (p.35). It’s true too in terms of memory.

The Maniototo is a part of northern Otago in Aotearoa New Zealand’s South Island. The part I was in is known colloquially as Thomson’s Barnyard because of the surveyor’s idiosyncratic naming. However in the distance the ranges (Hawkdun Range,  Mt Ida Range, Rough Ridge, the Lammermoors, Rock ‘n’ Pillars and the Kakanuis) seemed blue in the cold summer light, and something to be attained, although for me the glory is in seeing them.

As we drove south to Dunedin we passed through grey blue rocky landscapes of schist known as the Rock n Pillars.

The area is like an ‘enchanted realm’, an expression Solnit uses on page 34 to describe an area of the U.S.A. But it is not only the blue of distance but the blue blur of the past, made heroic by stories of miners seeking gold.

Solnit also talks about her dreams of a house from her childhood. “In dreams nothing is lost. ” she says “Childhood homes, the dead, lost toys, all appear with a vividness your waking mind could not achieve. Nothing is lost but you yourself…….” (p. 182). I often dream of a an area around my grandparents’ house and of a house they lived in near this one, also theirs. There is no trauma or significant event associated with these houses and this area, but I always try to walk around it when I am south. Just to see. And think. It’s a student flat now. How could you guess?

I thought about her lostness too, in Christchurch, much of which has been ‘lost’ due to earthquakes but which is being rebuilt. While there are still areas of ’empty’ space it’s also full of potential and I found a walkway and names that reflected local iwi (eewee in southern dialect notation) that had not been recognised before so that what had been lost to some seemed to be in the process of being found.

It was good to have Solnit with me.