The Lyricism of Getting Lost.

Rebecca Solnit's book A Field Guide to Getting Lost is one of the most poetic narratives I have read on the value of wandering.

Sample passages:

"Night alone in motels in remote western towns where I know no one and no one I know knows where I am, nights with the strange paintings and floral spread and cable television that furnish a reprieve from my own biography, when in Benjamin's terms I have lost myself though I know where I am."

"The world is blue at its edges and in its depths. This blue is the light that got lost. Light at the blue end of the spectrum does not travel the whole distance from the sun to us....This light that does not touch us, does not travel the whole distance, the light that gets lost, gives us the beauty of the world, so much of which is in the color blue."

This volume would make a wonderful graduation gift.