Bread and Water

On March 21, 2007, I walked out of London's Victoria Station and found that I was lost. Not in a bad way, just in a way.

I had landed at London's Gatwick airport a few hours earlier, made my way through customs, took a tram to to a train, and finally--and eagerly--disembarked in Victoria Station. This meant that the easy part was over, as I knew would be the case. Disoriented, I asked for help at the information booth where I was greeted by a tall black man who had hair to the middle of his back. Giving him the name of the hotel I was heading to, he helped me find the location on a map. I had looked at many maps before arriving, and I thought that I could probably walk from Victoria Station to the hotel; all I had to do was navigate to and then across Hyde Park.

"Can I walk there?" I asked.

He looked at me. He looked at my backpack. "You want to walk?"

I told him that, since leaving home, I'd been in one car, in an airport, on a plane, in another airport where I had to ride a tram to a different terminal so I could sit around and wait for another plane to a different airport, where I rode another tram to the train that had brought me to him--and I thought I should walk.

Really, all I said was, yes, I thought I might like to walk.

So, I walked, relying on my small map as I learned that while sometimes signs showing street names are on the sides of buildings, sometimes they are not but are lower, perhaps on a fence. Nevertheless, I finally reached Hyde Park, which is much larger than it appears on a map displayed on a computer screen.

Then I got lost in Hyde Park. I thought I had myself oriented; I thought I was smart enough to figure things out.

A digression: When I was four years old, my younger cousin and I walked out of my family's apartment in Harvard, Illinois, and wandered up and down the railroad tracks. I remember an old man carrying a lantern telling us we should go home. I remember riding home in the back of a police car. I remember the two of us being fed lunch (bologna sandwiches) when we got back to the apartment and then being sent to different bedrooms. I do not remember being found--standing in front of a bar, crying.

Another digression: The person I generally go backpacking with knows how to read maps. He knows north and south with his eyes closed. He has navigated a sail boat in the dark. When I go backpacking alone, I never leave the trail. I have never navigated a sail boat.

Remember the man at the information booth? I should have taken his advice: "Take a cab."

But, like most children, I at least do know what to do if I am lost in the woods: hug a tree. That way, someone will find you, and you will be rescued. There are many trees in Hyde Park, but I did not hug one. Instead, I sat on a bench near The Serpentine, which is an artificial lake. I watched a couple of men clean some rental boats. Some joggers jogged by, and I watched them.

I was already tired of my backpack. I was also cold, weary, and hungry. But, I did not cry as I had when I was four. Instead, I pulled from my pack a small container of water and a breadroll--leftovers from the dinner served somewhere between Dallas and London.

Ha! Isn't that pathetic! A fat old man sitting on a bench in London's Hyde Park, washing stale bread down his gullet with warm water. Who did I think I was--Oliver Twist? What rights did I have to such misery?

Okay. It wasn't miserable. It was, instead, a way to relax, to look closely at my map without walking, of letting myself enjoy the fact that I was not only not in a cubicle dealing with the bizarre nature of the corporate world, I was in London. Eventually, I continued walking, only to have some difficulty finding my way out of Hyde Park. Then, when I finally did escape, I spent another hour looking for my hotel, which must have been moving around somehow.

And the hotel? It was a pit. A dive. A dump. A firetrap. But, at least for a couple of nights, it would be home--and I had more in mind than spending much time in bed.