Before I got a smartphone – and this was embarrassingly not long ago, like less than a full year back now – I railed constantly against google maps and online tools for travel. Yes, they mean you’ll never get lost again. But you’ll never get lost again. That’s heartbreaking.
I love getting lost. On my year-long road trip (chronicled here, because I’m really not at all an anti-internet person), I was lost about 89% of the time. It’s one of my favorite things to do, and absolutely the best way to travel. You never miss anything, because you weren’t aiming for anything to begin with, and you find little amazements that delight you. Like this, hidden behind a bush off Route 66:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jujuwiz/16519111936/
Y’all, I was wrong. That little guy? Geocaching.com actually led me to him. And this?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jujuwiz/16544082782/in/photostream/
Roadtrippers.com. Here’s the thing: I’ve figured out how to use the tools.
Today, they actually helped me get even more lost than normal. Because I was free of any fear. I knew that I could dig myself out of any hole that I wandered into accidentally. It may be that the degree of ‘lost’ness wasn’t quite as great, that because I wasn’t really in danger of never coming back, then maybe I wasn’t ever truly lost. Still. I got lost enough to bliss me out, anyway. I ditched my expectations, and found back roads and heartlands backyards that blew my mind.
I may just be a luddite no more.
I’ll leave you with one last image. Early this morning, I was following a geocache link out to a cemetery in Kansas. I could see some headstones off in the distance, so I started crossing an empty (I thought) field toward them. A few steps in, my boots clicked on something. I paused, and started pulling at the weeds, uncovering a gravestone. Then I uncovered ten more.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/jujuwiz/15922552634/in/photostream/
America, The Strange 
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