The Lost Art Of Getting Lost

You'll find me at the intersection of technology and nostalgia this week, somewhere between The Goonies and SXSW London

I was holed up in Shoreditch, London last week at SXSW (name drop) and this came up in one of the conference conversations. It was about the mundanity and drudgery - the friction point - of getting lost and how there will never be another generation to Get Lost. Losers if you will.

Like so many other lasts, the drama, nerves and adventure of getting lost are no longer A Thing. I spent all week soaking up knowledge at this 5-day phantasmagoria of a conference, so why this one stupid throw-away line has stuck with me says more about The Menopause than it should.

I feel nostalgic about the fact that no one gets to Be Lost anymore. Have I lost the plot? See what I did there? I might not have loved getting lost when I was, well, lost but Getting Lost adventures are just that: adventures. They were the best stories, the ones you told at dinner parties later that night, the ones I still tell my punks decades later.

I can recall with startling clarity the times I got well and truly lost. Anyone old enough to remember map books – proper maps books that you kept in your car for emergencies, that you could hire with your rental car if you were travelling to other cities for work – will remember that they were wild.

Who remembers following the lines and roads and matching up the pages to join H32 on pg 98 with its corresponding good time on pg 207? We needed a degree in town-planning and nerves of steel to get anywhere. It’s why we all learnt to navigate like old-timey cart drivers – turn sharp left at the bottom of the dune, straight ‘til you see a lonely tree, then right and right again. None of this soothing ‘head in a north easterly direction’. Say what now? Do I pass the tree or not? Do I pass the tree or not, Mitzi?!

Try doing that map malarkey at night, after an Archers peach schnapps or two back in 1993, and you were well and truly on the road to misadventure! I can still get anywhere and everywhere in Joburg without blinking. I once drove from Bedfordview to Sandton via Rockey Street and Germiston (don’t ask those of you who know Jozi – I’m still only hazily sure of where I went wrong) because I was too lost to stop and check my map book. Map books needed time, good lighting and all your faculties. So, I just followed the line of mine dumps (again, relic) until I figured out that they needed to be on my left – or was it my right?! - if I ever wanted to get back home.

It’s sort of like Cape Town’s Table Mountain rule, only waaaay less glamorous.

First trips to London came with London’s A-Z – an iconic pocketbook that every Antipodean who left their country for Earl’s Court had smashed in their back pocket or their Kookai handbag. It was a badge of honour – a true sign of feeling like more of a local – when you could get your shit together without having to check that map book. My first trip to New York, came with a print-out that I took with me everywhere. It was penned for me by my travel one-and-only Sam Growdon and fork it, how I wish I’d kept it.

It started thus: “Walk out your hotel and turn right, you will be tempted to turn left, but don’t. If you go right and keep walking, you will get to Dean & Deluca. This is where you have to stop for your first coffee. Do not stop anywhere else. Do not order in. Get a takeaway and sit at the counter overlooking the street, people watching…”

And so it went, part map, part tour guide. It should come as little surprise to you to know that all these many years later, Sam has now lived across several continents and is a travel advisor with infinite knowledge (follow here here) but back then, she was just a bestie who knew a bestie wouldn’t need a map.

It was The Goonies map of New York… A treasure hunt that eventually wound me all the way back to the front door of my hotel. The only time I went off-piste that trip I wound up screamingly late to a dinner with my then-CEO, sopping wet – dripping on the carpet, wringing out my cuffs wet. I’d got caught in the rain, it had gotten dark, I was so discombombulated that I was racing in circles. It was not the stylish, pulled-together, urbane editor-at-large kinda vibe that I was going for. Alas. Defs should have kept the print-out.

Being Lost was an exercise in grit, resilience, quick thinking and a bit of bravery. Am I really being too Goonies about it now? I forking hated it when I did get lost and I couldn’t love Google Maps any more if I tried, but The Goonies had my generation in a chokehold… They were a group of kids who find a map that they believe leads to the pirate treasure of One-Eyed Willy and OBVS set off on an underground adventure – complete with booby traps, secret passageways and bad-tempered baddies - to get the gold. It is a cult classic. Us Gen Xers were made for getting lost and following maps. My punks think I am insane.

Them: Mom, why would anyone want to get lost?

Me: Well, because unpicking the mystery of how you got lost and righting it all by yourself is pretty cool.

Them: Erm, how is that cool, mom?

Me: [still thinking of the right answer, also: what was the alternative?]

It’s a moot point. We no longer get lost. Sooner than we think, according to the SXSW tech experts, we will no longer be commuting - our cars will be doing it for us. We will no longer be doing boring, admin work - our AI will have a handle on all those repetitive time-wasters allowing us more time to be creative. But the more things change, the more they stay the same, according to these same speakers, it is curiosity and motivation that will lead the way. And that’s not really too different from finding your way after getting lost.