lost and found

"In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round, -- for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost, -- do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words, nor till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations."

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, "The Village"