283: Being good at being lost: Amity Gaige’s Heartwood
Dear friends
My coaching work often integrates fiction. I do so because it allows us to see depth and nuance that non-fiction can’t.
The non-fiction author can’t explore imagination or internal dialogue, but our unspoken dreams, hopes and fears influence so much of what we will and won’t do.
We understand people by understanding that underneath words and actions is a story that we might not know.
Reading fiction helps us see the world we live in; the worlds we create. Ben Okri reminds us, “Beware the stories you tell or read: subtly at night, beneath the waters of consciousness they are altering your world”.
Today’s letter offers a window into my approach.
Amity Gaige’s Heartwood was one of the NYT’s 100 Most Notable Books of 2025. It tells the story of Valerie, a hiker who gets lost on The Appalachian Trail.
We revisit it through our lens of strategy, soul and self.
/strategy
As it becomes clear that Valerie is lost, teams of volunteers and professionals gather to find her.
Lieutenant Bev, who leads the search for her, says “Any woodsmen who says he’s never been lost in the woods is a liar. It’s inevitable. Up here in the North Woods, everybody goes queer now and again”, continuing, “Up here, we tend to think of being lost as something you can be good at”.
Even then, she reflects, that when someone is truly lost “The disorientation can be shattering” and when it happens, “Panic crowds out common sense. It makes the lost person crave a quick solution”.
As the search for Valerie stretches into days, Bev encourages the assembled searchers: “Some of the people I’ve searched for were experienced outdoorsmen. You know the kind. That crack bowhunter, the guy who can snowshoe for miles, or who can free-climb a wall of ice… But sometimes, even those guys don’t survive getting lost. Those guys, I’ve found them drowned from crossing a river with too much gear. I’ve seen them travel directionally right across roads that would have taken them home, just out of pride. Some lost people don’t have the skills but instead they have something else. I don’t know what to call it. Heart. They survive because of their love of life or of the dear ones in their mind. They stay present. They keep their eyes open. Often, when these people are rescued, they report feeling a sense of wonder out there. For the moments they had left. For the privilege of being alive at all.”
All of us who lead complexity, will say that we love it. We love the challenge, we live for it and, most dangerously, we have it all under control, we know what must be done – after all we’re so experienced.
Still, the time will come when we are truly lost. It happens to every person and every business.
It is then that our salvation rests in our ability to recognise that our story of ourselves as experienced and expert may be blinding us to the terrain, that we need to resist the quick solution or sticking to plans that no longer make sense.
It’s a big ask, but it is the ask of leadership and life: to be aware that the route we’ve chosen may not be the route we now need, to stay present in the complexity of being lost, and to be aware that our skills and historic confidence may blind us to what the terrain tells us.
If we’re lucky, stay calm, adjust and act intentionally, we get to say we are grateful for the experience.
//self
Later Lt Bev reflects, “More and more frequently, we were rescuing folks uselessly seeking higher ground to find a cell phone signal, when the route back to civilization was always downhill, following drainages, power lines”.
The cell phone here is a compelling metaphor: the seemingly quick solution that leads us astray, its apparent ease blinding us to the other options.
The real solution, the way we rescue ourselves, is different. It’s by pausing, by relinquishing the mirage of ease, by watching the movement around us, the direction the rivers are running, that the power lines take, knowing that if we follow that, it will get us home.
It will be harder than the fantasy of the technological quick fix. It is more durable.
///soul
Valerie ends Heartwood: “Here’s an idea: All emotions start out as love.
Later, that love is worked on by the forces of luck and suffering.
Hate is just soured love.
Fear is wounded love.
Longing is homeless love.
Love, not pain, is the mother.
Love is the taproot. I have no regrets. I do not regret anything”.
Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ’s describes his 55 Errant List of Literary Things as “a list of 55 books, essays, writers and poets that I envy and love, that have influenced my own writing and thinking, or that I teach”. It offers much inspiration and echoes this letter’s heartbeat, that we can shape our world by what we choose to read (thank you, Sharmi Surianarain, for sharing this with me).
With love
Karl
PS: You can read a review of Heartwood here.
PPS: This LinkedIn post explains how and why I integrate various voices into my coaching practice.