The lost

Clearly a visitor, the runner in the red Tshirt had the name of a place at his disposal: Do you know where....is? I was on my way over the North Washington St bridge and missed his reference: something about a corporate name and a basketball court. Whatever. Clearly the guy just needed a place to run. It was a beautiful morning. The harbor was smooth as glass. I told him about running beside the river and waved in the general direction. Then I took off.

He caught up with me and my directions became more explicit (though the route was complex): across the road, down the stairs into a park, under the highway and over the bridge over the railroad tracks into the next park and...suddenly, I had to tie my shoes. Catching up with him, he was heading in the wrong way---to the Navy Yard, and I redirected him across the highway: there, there's the entrance.

I hope he made it to the river or at least had a good run. How easy it is to get lost. This city in particular is full of cul-de-sacs, complex intersections, offsets and loops, not to mention detours. You think you can get there; in fact, you can almost see it; but it's always a longer way than you'd counted on.

Still, I know this place: I've seen the landmarks, have a mental image of the area, can link the sun's direction to the principal features. After all, there's always the river; in Boston, there's always the Hancock. Out in Watertown, I can get turned but when do I go there?

Being lost is fun and frustrating. I can revel in it...until I have an appointment. There's a special conversation that goes on between the lost and the locale. On the part of the lost, a struggle to create a map, intially of cocktail napkin quality, to pin down the key reference points so as to simply determine one's current location. The locale is stubbornly itself, refusing to produce the expected recognizable landmark where it should be.The lost are full of query and the locale unconcerned. The lost dizzy with turning around; the locale rock solid and complacent. 'Haven't I been here before? rages the lost.  'Once, twice, a hundred times, what do I care? yawns the locale.

Reading Earl Thollander's Back Roads of California mostly for the splendid watercolors and sketches but incidentally for the narrative, I think: maybe the question should be not, 'Where am I?' but 'What a road!' and 'Let's stop to look.'  Each place then starts to be itself under our gaze, presenting itself shyly beautiful. Columbus Park, North Point park, the view from the pedestrian bridge between, will now fill out where they are, and the once-lost will have glowing memories of mysteriously beautiful green jewels somewhere in Boston or Cambridge. magical places that, with luck, he'll encounter again.