I don’t remember being physically lost. Ever. It might have something to do with this inner guidance system I seem to have. There have been plenty of times when I could have been lost, or become lost, but I always knew where to turn.

Like the time driving with my mom on a road trip through Utah. Out where giant pillars of purple rock erupt abruptly out of the flat red earth at dramatic angles, pointing to the clouds like children’s fingers in a candy shop. There were no road signs. The roads stretched out like thin threads, the slightest breeze threatening to break them. We had directions to a campground to stay for the night. We knew the name of the road to turn on. My inner GPS (this was before electronic GPS) told me that road back there was the right one, though there was no sign. I turned the car around and we took that turn. Sure enough, there was the campground.

What was more lost on this trip was another portion of my willingness to buy into the not so secret rules of the family game. We were going to pick up my younger siblings at my adopted father’s new wife’s family home in Montana where they had all gone to summer camp. We had made the trip fun, planned to go camping on the way there, just the two of us, out in nature, pointing purple stony fingers at the candy in the sky, to sweeten the pain of the circumstances. We watched the long horizon stretching out before us as we drove, letting the loss of belief in the sanctity of marriage, of trust in promises, of commitment, devotion, sacrifice, all of the things my mother had practiced in her marriage to my step dad, letting all of that loss spread out thin and hazy across the flatness. Letting the stars, the moon, the sun bleach out the color of that pain and fill it back in with the rhythms of how small we really are.

It was on that trip that my sister lost her ignorance of how the moon and her blood were connected. We went on an 11 mile hike through the canyonlands. It was so hot that day the water in our bottles was like tea, just a little cooler than that perfect hot tea drinking temperature. So not enough coolness to refresh, and not enough hotness to awaken. We took a break in the shade of the red and purple rock cliffs. And I told her about the moon.

I told her about the magic of her menstrual cycles, connecting her with the tides, the seasons, the phases of heavenly bodies. I held back my awe so as not to lose my own magic into her, knowing she has a spilling point.

I have been more lost in other people than in places. With people, even though they have signs, I worry I have taken wrong turns, like my mother did with my adopted father. This worry disrupts my inner knowing about which way to turn.

Looking back on that trip, I remember that the trick to not getting lost is to trust the clarity when it comes. Believe in that knowing, even if it means you have to turn around after missing the turn and go back a bit. Even if it feels awkward to admit you passed it back there.

But when the horizon stretches out so big, with purple and red rocks reaching for the sky, and we are hurling ourselves along broken threads in the wind, what it means to be lost, or to know where we are going starts to shrink in significance. Pretty soon all there is are clouds evoking desire from stone.