As a young businessman in the early 1980s, I had the opportunity to travel to Western Australia. I don’t remember why I went, or what business I was doing there. I knew virtually nothing about the place—it was not on the map for me. While in Perth, I heard about a government program to encourage local Aboriginal artisans to adapt their traditional sand paintings on to canvas using acrylic paints. I saw some photos of their work and was intrigued. When I had a day off, I set forth into the desert for a trading post a few hours outside of Perth. I may not have been this impulsive today, but I was then and the results of my little adventure were a revelation on many levels. When I asked for directions to this place, a local gentlemen in Perth who was from that region of the bush advised, "You don't need directions. There is only one road, and it leads to the place you wish to go. Just go. You will know when you have arrived." I had been schooled in one of the basic tenants of Australian Aboriginal thought. Many years later, Nike would come up with its "Just Do It" tagline, but the original Australians had been thinking this way for at least 10,000 years. 

You might be tempted to label this concept as "instinct," but it’s much more than that. For the people in the Outback, way-finding is both a practical and a spiritual matter. They practice "walkabouts." On one level, it’s just as it sounds—they start walking and walk until they do not want, or need, to walk anymore. But it’s not about covering distance or finding any particular place. Rather, these walkabouts are more of a meditation, with the goal of discovering what needs to be discovered, both within and without. No maps are needed for a walkabout. 

A feature of this exercise is extreme, multi-sensory attention to what is all around you, at each and every moment. The Outback of Western Australia is immense and often seems featureless, at least to some. I can imagine local people learn to recognize, discover, and find their paths in a way which leads to intense remembrance.  Having walked through a part of their country, they emerge with an understanding of the place as well as their own part and place in it. This way-finding technique is experiential and multidimensional informed. It’s not only graphically advised, curated from afar, as dependence on a map or electronic terrain depiction may be. This is the creation of instinct on a number of levels. I am told that can lead to a kind of orientational "alchemy." You can learn to be guided by all of your senses, by signs seen and unseen.

The Menil Collection in Houston has recently concluded an exhibit entitled, "Mapa Wiya" (Your Map's Not Needed). I was lucky enough to see the exhibit with my family over the holidays. It reminded me of my 40-year affinity for Australian Aboriginal art, but also my deep, visceral response to this form of imagery. The Westerners who first encountered the Aboriginal people of Australia considered them primitive, and even sub-human. Until fairly recent times, they usually took away their children and placed them in special schools to "civilize" them. Of course, the same things happened to native peoples here in America until well into the 20th century. 

The name of the Menil exhibit, which I will translate as "We don't need your freakin’ maps," presents the question of “just who were the uncivilized people in that encounter?” Aboriginal people considered western maps to be laughably primitive because they only described geography at the most basic levels. Everyone knew there was a river here, a mountain, there, etc. But what about also knowing where one's ancestors dwelled, where animal spirits roamed, or where the deep vibrations of the earth, its time, and unseen spaces emanated? This knowledge and wisdom were nowhere to be found on western maps. To the Aboriginal people, those maps were as useless and pointless as a single straight line drawn on an empty sheet of paper. They were unwanted and childish. So the original people of Australia told the makers, "Mapa Wiya."

I do not wish to demean the empirical workmanship of a good map. It’s useful, beautiful, and can even be life-saving under some circumstances. However, we live in a time when people can no longer find their way without detailed maps, most often digital these days. I fear we are losing our human ability to be way-finders.  Is there no longer wonder in wandering? If we are never "lost," can we truly know how to find? Is our FOBL ("fear of being lost") disrupting the capability to form the soulful human skills which can help us see, rather than just look, and to discover, rather than to simply arrive?

I recently had a chance encounter with a lady who was passing through Austin for the day while making her way from Florida to her home in Los Angeles.  Even though this was a long way to travel, she had chosen to drive for no apparent reason except to "have a look around."  While she might not have realized it, she was on a "walkabout." Her path appeared meandering to some, as empty of the obvious signposts as the West Texas desert she would soon enter. I was envious! My heart longs for this type of creative wandering. When it was time to say goodbye, what came out of my mouth surprised us both: I blurted out, "May you find what you are NOT looking for." I don't know where this came from—or maybe I do? Perhaps these sentiments emerged from a place not on any map, but meant to guide us nevertheless. I don't know if it was she, or me, who needed this guidance more.  Those words emerging from my mouth were like the "clunk" felt and heard after falling out of bed from a deep sleep. 

After some reflection, what is the meaning of that "clunk"? It is this: May we not be always going in directions we believe to be our destination, but also allow enough space and time to way-find ourselves to places we never knew, but perhaps need to be. 

Read more about the Menil Collection’s exhibit, “Mapa Wiya (Your Map's Not Needed)”