Lost Places: On Losing And Finding Home

Founded in fieldwork and reflection, Lost Places follows the author from small towns and rural landscapes, through a transitional city neighborhood, to the challenging construction of an urban renewal loft, as she struggles to renovate living spaces and transform relationships after an early divorce. In a voice droll and lyrical by turns, Hankla charts a path through enigmatic encounters with snakes and contemplations of Thomas Jefferson’s problematic biography homes, underground and ancient cities, Star Trek, the contradictory nature of Appalachia, desire, our families, spiritual callings, and definitions of home. The title essay offers an extended meditation on the center place, Chaco Culture, cradle of pueblo civilization in northwest New Mexico, its talismanic beckoning and interpretative layers. Embracing the tradition of contemplative labyrinths, one woman wanders her path, pumping toward then away from the heart, revealing her perception of reality as circuitous, continuous, and essentially non-rational and sensory. Hankla invites us to seek deeper understandings and connections with our own inner landscapes and the earth itself. In reading this memoir, we engage with a writer’s mind at work on the world and experience how the world works on the writer, as Hankla confronts and traces, with an abundance of faith and curiosity, her own and our collective spirals of consciousness and desire, which repeat and expand through time.