I recently began reading a nonfiction book titled Out of the Woods: A Memoir of Wayfinding by Lynn Darling. A passage from the Prologue winked at me...
Experts in the field of direction talk about the difference between way keeping, which is simply the ability to stick to a certain path, following well-marked landmarks and signposts, and wayfinding, what you do when you must rely on yourself, your reading of the landscape and the decisions only you can make. We start out in life learning the first; with luck we end up knowing something of the latter, to the extent that accident and blessing give us choice. Perhaps in the end that is what wayfinding amounts to: learning how to allow for accident, and make way for blessing.
For me, college was all about way keeping-: go to class and mass, pass exams, intern in my field, partake in extracurricular activities, eat right and exercise, make friends, and... graduate. Graduation meant that I had stepped over the line separating a familiar, well-marked path into a field where I was to cultivate my own. Exciting? You betcha! Nerve-racking? Of course. Now, with just over a year having passed since tossing my cap, I have come to find that wayfinding through the “real world” is more of a blessing than I could have ever imagined.
Wayfinding has such a challenging, humbling, and empowering freedom to it. It challenges me to allow accidents and blessings to cultivate my humility, which empowers me to keep on my way.
