The following essay is an excerpt from my book “Things I Have Noticed”. Considering that I will (again) go hiking this year, some thoughts on the matter.
“For an hour I am beyond desire.
It is not out of myself, but in myself.
I am.”
Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain
1
There are two things I think about when it comes to finding things.
Firstly: There's a Native American saying, that I read somewhere in a book I cannot remember or I have seen it in a film or on a TV show, that says: “Things reappear when they want to be found. Till then they are lost.” I often think about that when I look for my keys, for my phone, tickets, lipsticks, passports, excuses, dreams, memories, new lovers. It gives me a certain peace of mind that I don’t need togo and look for them, that there in fact is actually no point in looking, as it is not decided by me when the reunion should take place.
Secondly: There’s a children’s game in Germany that was played at every birthday party I went to between the ages of four and seven. One child would be blind-folded and equipped with a wooden spoon, crawl on all fours, trying to find the metal pot that had some treats hidden under it. The other children not blind-folded would shout at the top of their lungs, whether it was “cold” or “hot” increasing the degrees the closer the blind-folded child got to the pot. Finding something is just like that. Taking off your blind fold and banging that pot: Hot Hot Heat.
The summer I couldn’t pay rent and went hiking instead, very much felt like that. I had just moved from Berlin to Edinburgh and was trying to get my feet back on the ground. I wasn’t homeless. I had an address. I had a passport. I wasn’t living on the streets. Not a social case. Not looking for pity here. I just didn’t have enough money. That’s all.