He couldn’t cross the street without someone to see for him. Once the sale had been made, the Turtle Man would use his white cane to tap his way down the street to the corner and stand there yelling that he needed help. The monks liked them and, although they only wanted one tin, would buy two because, well, the man was blind. Four months later, she went to the San Francisco Zen Center near her “white birdcage of an apartment” for the regularly scheduled Sunday morning talk.Ī gaunt monk in dark robes sat down cross-legged in front of the audience and began telling the story of the Turtle Man, a blind man who would come to the center to sell tins of chocolate-covered caramel turtles. Near the very end of her book, Solnit tells a story of having a dream one night of carrying a leaking tortoise around her childhood bedroom. Her third recognition is that these aren’t negative at all. Darkness is part of the texture of light.
It has to do with a recognition that, first, none of these is avoidable, and that, second, each is the yin to a yang of some seemingly positive aspect of human existence.įor instance, you can’t have heartbreak without having had love. The deep place where life is richest, fullest. Solnit looks deeply into how various people and peoples have faced all of these seemingly negative aspects of existence and how she has faced them in her own history.Īnd she finds in them the deepest life. Rebecca Solnit’s 2005 A Field Guide to Getting Lost is a celebration of much that is disdained and feared by mainstream American society:ĭoes that list give you nightmares? Then, A Field Guide to Getting Lost is not for you.
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