Jodi Hills

So this is who I am – a writer that paints, a painter that writes…

Tag Archives: direction


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Precious Fields.

I suppose the closest thing we had to an “influencer” when I was in college was the purchasing of a used book highlighted in bright yellow. Being on a tight budget, I was often subjected to what the previous student deemed important. Perhaps it was defiance, or simply making my own path, but armed with my own highlighter, pink, orange, anything other than yellow, I colored over and in my deepest connections to the word. By the time the next student, spending their last dime to earn an education, opened the textbook, it would have been completely highlighted. Just as it should be, I thought, because wasn’t it all important! Every word a path lit fluorescent.


And I think that’s our real responsibility, not to push or “influence,” but offer a light. 

I’m reading a new book, This is Happiness, by Niall Williams. I’ve only just begun, but I am deep in the journey. This author demands that each word be walked carefully, like Hugo’s precious field behind our house on Van Dyke Road. No trampling through. Respectful of all that the ground had to yield, before and yet to come. With each paragraph, the golden crop brushes against my chubby thighs, leaving the safety of house toward the excitement of town. Tiptoeing out of youth, with its remains gathering in my shoes. 

I suppose I am a highlighter of word, and memory, and heart. Because isn’t it all important? Isn’t it all important!! I walk the new morning. The gravel in my shoes answers a bright and glorious YES! 

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Good morning, Corrigan!

In fifth grade we went orienteering. There was nothing in our history that said we would be good at orienteering. Most of us, in our 10 or 11 years on this earth, had never even heard of it. But off we went. Handing in our signed parental waivers as we filed into the big yellow school bus, perhaps as unaware as livestock heading off to market. We stopped in the middle of the largest forest we had ever seen. Surely this was the beginning of a horror film. We stomped into the wooden cabins and waited. Of course we would wait for dark. That’s exactly how it would read in the script. We were assigned teams. We didn’t pick teams like in sports. No one had any idea who would actually be good at this, so it would have been hard to choose key members. There were brief instructions. No one listened. We assumed, as in our monthly fire drills at school, we would march out, and somehow march back in. We were given compasses and charts and courses. Each team was to finish a specific course, mark it on the maps and return to base camp. Teachers waited up in the trees, to watch us, or to frighten us. I imagine, as with any disaster, perhaps a plane crash – just before the point of impact when people start wishing they had listened to the preflight instructions – we began questioning each other, “does anyone know how to do this?” We didn’t. There was something about stars, I think. Maybe these compasses. And suddenly it became very clear that it was dark, and we were in the woods. We started running. This made the most sense. We picked any check point we could find. As fast as we could. And later than anyone expected, even with the running, we miraculously found our way back to the cabins.
In 1938, Douglas Corrigan made a flight plan from New York to California. Twenty eight hours after taking off, he landed in Ireland. He got out of the plane and said, “Where am I?”  To the amusement of both sides of the Atlantic, he stuck to his story of a malfunctioning compass.  He was given the name Wrong-Way and written into the history books.  Up until then, he had been merely a footnote.
The chaperones came down from the trees, and avoided being “up a creek,” as we were all alive and safe.  While no team exceeded expectations, our team ended up doing the wrong course, in the wrong direction, with the slowest time.  They gave us paper certificates, clearly made from the cabin’s photocopier, with the Wrong-way Corrigan award (or citation). We were no longer footnotes of the fifth grade. 
At some point we all have to find our way. Some of us need to follow the wrong path beforewe find the right one. Perhaps most of us. The wrong job. The wrong love. The wrong town. Sometimes you have to get lost in order to find your way. Sometimes you have to take the wrong path. Draw the wrong perspective. Then things can become clear. I have done all. I have stumbled over my own heart and path, every day. But both are mine. Mine to walk. Mine to share. There’s no compass for that. There’s only faith. And the stars.