Solnit built this out of nine essays circling a single idea, which she takes from a line she found in Meno: How do you go looking for something when you don’t know what it is? Four of the nine are titled “The Blue of Distance,” and they run through the book as a refrain, tracking that blue at the far edge of mountains and water, the color of the thing you want and can’t reach. Around them, she moves through the Spanish conquistador who walked across the continent and lost his own culture on the way, captives who refused rescue, punk clubs and the Desert Southwest, country songs, the deaths of friends, and a tortoise shell she keeps. She treats being lost as a discipline rather than an accident, something you can get good at.
A Field Guide to Getting Lost