When I ask students to free-write on the topic of “being lost,” I have come to learn what I might expect. Students volunteer plenty of stories about terrified toddlers in grocery stores, helpful amusement park employees, and learner’s permit misadventures.

When I poll the room, though, a pattern emerges.

“It sounds like some of you wrote about being literally lost, when you really didn’t know where you were or how to get back,” I say. “Show of hands: who wrote about a time when you felt lost?”

More often than not, the silent students—the ones who exercised their right not to share what they wrote—raise their hands. These early, loose minutes of class are rarely when the heavy stuff gets brought to the table.

But I can see there are memories floating across my students’ eyes, and when we spend time wandering down the page, we have a chance to make new sense of things.

“Spill out whatever you want; the page will hold you up.”

Joy Castro, Island of Bones

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Writing Prompt

I once picked the wrong entrance ramp and took the interstate into a neighboring state when I was trying to get home by curfew after a concert.

I once got on the wrong train, alone, in Switzerland.

But I’ve also cruised the back roads for destinations unknown, letting let the gravel spit from my tires and the dust rise in my wake.

We might choose to get lost in our writing, too. And we don’t need the energy of an explorer or a voyager or even a well-rested tourist. We just need faith enough to jump onto the page and roll with our thoughts a while.

“Writing lets us hear our own voices at length, in peace,” Joy Castro writes. “It gives us the chance to follow the thread of our own thought.”

Set a timer for five minutes. Follow your own thread. Start here if you could use something to kick off from:

• “Up ahead I could see…”
• “I knew I could make it back because…”
• “I had never noticed…”