Mapped and unmapped

In Sydney, I taught about adult development, I watched the flying foxes at the Botanic Gardens, and I went to the opera. This, as it turns out, is a recipe for a most delightful time, especially when done in what I think is the most wonderful city in the world. This combination had me thinking about the way we live in the world with some of our paths mapped and others unmapped, and what that means for who we are and how we live.

The plane schedule meant that I had a free morning before the meetings and the workshops began. A friend had suggested a particular neighbourhood might be the right one for me to wander through on my way to the harbour and botanic gardens. I glanced at a map on my computer in my hotel room and was surprised by it (I wouldn’t have guessed that I was as close the harbour as I was) and trotted downstairs to pick up a map to take along. It is my destiny, however, to wander around cities blindly (especially when I leave the guide book on the bookshelf in New Zealand)..So of course the two maps the woman offered me didn’t go enough to the left (is that south?)to have any of the neighbourhoods I was wanting. So I set off blind, as I often do, and walked that-a-way.

I wandered through old Sydney neighbourhoods with front porches decked out in iron scrolls and draped with tropical flowers. I had memories of Old San Juan and Charleston in the pastel-painted stucco houses which were interrupted by the shrieking Aussie cockatoos. I wandered, keeping a diagonal track away from my hotel. I wanted to end up in Darling Harbour where I could catch a ferry to the Circular Quay at the Opera House and botanic garden.

I loved the walk. I loved the realness of it, the way I passed real people who lived there and were doing their real work, mothers pushing strollers (or would they say “pushchairs” like they do here?), young people milling about. I loved the excitement of walking to the top of a hill to wonder what was on the other side. Would that be the Harbour? But I was also conscious of losing time, that I had only until my meeting at 2 and that I hadn’t eaten in 18 hours. I needed to get somewhere, which is harder to do when you’re lost. And so I sat with it, content and uncontent in my lostness, thinking of it mostly as an adventure, and only rarely as an error.

Then, finally, I saw Ferry Street, which seemed like a good sign, and I took it, winding down a hill and ending up at Harbour—bliss! Only this wasn’t Darling Harbour at all, no actual ferries came here at all! My heart threatened to sink with disappointment (I love to be lost until I’m ready to be found again, and then sometimes I can begin to hate the whole adventure). But wait, there was the Sydney fisherman’s wharf, and there were tables in the sunshine where you could eat your food and watch the pelicans swimming around the fishing boats. I bought broiled fish, chips, and salad and carried them into the sparkling sunshine. I ate my first Sydney meal (I had skipped dinner the night before and hadn’t yet had breakfast) and felt the worry of lostness melt away with the squawking of the seagulls. This was the life—and I’d never have meant to come here and couldn’t be happier anywhere else. Lost was wonderful.

Then, belly full and at the Harbour now, I set over across parking lots and under highways. My intention was to hug the water and assume that would take me to Darling Harbour, but, on the far side of the highway I found…a map! The map showed me the shortest way, which meant turning my back to the water and climbing a hill, an unintuitive way to skip the wandering fingers of land that jut out into the Harbour. So off I went, pleased to be so well found again. Soon there was Darling Harbour and the ferry stop, and the symmetry and known-ness of time tables and familiar routes. I sat on the ferry, watched the Opera House move into view under the Harbour bridge, and thought about how wonderful it was to be found.

It wasn’t until later that I found out that that little spit of land I skipped, the one the map showed me how to miss, was a fantastic sculpture garden. When I heard about the sculptures dancing in the wind or floating in the water, I cursed the map that showed me the shortcut over the hill. I also know, though, that winding my way around would have left me with less time to wander the Botanic Gardens and perhaps I’d never have seen the cockatoos digging a hole in the ground. There are lessons here about lostness and foundness and shortest ways. Perhaps the best road to walk is the one you’re on, mapped or unmapped. Perhaps we are actually always lost, actually always found.

(pictures today are of me lost and found in Sydney, and of Aidan, well-placed at home)