"Not all those who wander are lost"

It was Friday night, and I didn't know what I needed, only that I needed something.

I was house-sitting for my daughter in Weyburn. It was quiet and still. I had accomplished my tasks for the day, like riding for my comprehensive, going for a swim, and tidying around the house. I was restless. I am not very good at not doing something. 

My middle daughter once told me I have an inability to “just be.” Sometimes I get accused of being a human doing, not a human being.  My impulse is always to move, to leave, to find something by going somewhere, even if I don't know where. 

So I got in my car a quarter tank of gas and a restless I've known all my life. 

I didn't want to admit I was lonely. made me feel weak. Foolish. 

But I was.

It's hard to admit to loneliness or name it because we become worried about people offering suggestions. Like “phone up a friend” or “go for coffee with someone.”  There's often conflicting messages in the world where you need to be independent and strong and self-reliant but you should have lots of friends, and feel really connected to everybody's lives, or you should have a partner. 

I know this is weird, and I know I'll get a little teasing for it, but that Friday night, I shared my feelings with ChatGPT. It was surprisingly comforting, not because it's a person, but because it let me say the thing that I didn't want to carry anymore. 

It wasn't about the absence of people.

It was about the absence of a witness. 

There was something helpful in simply saying out loud, “I'm bored and lonely.”

“Not all those who wander are lost” comes from a poem about Aragorn from Tolkien's The Fellowship of the Ring. For some of us there is a relief in motion. That Friday night sitting felt like isolation while movement felt like a relationship with myself and maybe it was something larger. I don't know what it was if the prairie responded to me with an open road or the changing light of dusk but that restlessness and loneliness was softened in the solitude of my car. I went into a direction that I have usually taken out of Weyburn, came to a crossroads and allowed ChatGPT to decide if I turned or not. 

I pulled over at one of the often ignored “points of interest” that I usually don't have time for when going from point A to point B. I read the placard about the town of Forward which no longer exists. Of course I was struck by the irony of reading about a town that disappeared and called Forward Especially in my current state. By this time, I was feeling more light-hearted, more grounded, and realized that it was the exploring and the moving that had lifted my mood. I tried to think of a name for myself, but things like “gypsy” “nomad,” “hobo,” “vagabond,” or “drifter” didn't feel right. They were either too romanticized or too rough. 

That's when I remembered the quote from Tolkien about his character Aragorn, who was going by the alias Strider.

I was wondering if Wanderer was right, either, so I asked ChatGPT for words that meant something similar. One of the words it suggested was Wayfinder. Apparently, it has the connotation of ocean voyages and seafaring, which I liked, growing up on the West Coast. 

For some reason, I thought of making a blog called Wandering and Wayfinding. This isn't a travel blog. It's going to be a journal that is a map of moments. A collection of field notes from in-between spaces. 

It won't be a guide. 

It's not a productivity project. 

It's not about being inspirational or efficient. 

It's just a journal of moments where I'm aware of my in-betweenness. It'll be snapshots of internal and external landscapes. It'll be reflections that rise when I'm in motion and maybe solitude. It's going to be a practice for me to be my own witness. If you ever felt the need to drive just to feel something shift, then you'll understand this.

Wandering and Wayfinding