Over the years I’ve seen too many times how travel becomes something to be ticked off a bucket list and becomes driven by sites and sights. It’s time to (re) imagine travel as a deeper engagement with landscapes, their communities and ourselves.
The essence of LoST—Landscapes of Stories and Time—lies in a way of travelling that is rooted in place, relational in terms of building understanding, and reflective of our roles as travellers. It is not defined by how far you go, but by how deeply you engage with where you are. LoST invites you to move slowly, treating each place as a living archive layered with memory, meaning and possibility. Whether walking through terraced fields, paddling a tidal creek, or wandering a quiet neighbourhood street, the LoST traveller enters into a dialogue with place—attentive to its ecologies, its histories and the people who continue to shape it. To be LoST is to recognise that every landscape carries stories and that those stories unfold not on a schedule, but in time.
At its heart, LoST is both an ethic and a practice. It resists the patterns of conventional travel and replaces them understanding landscapes that are shaped by stories, experiences and history. The LoST traveller is not a consumer of places but a temporary participant—someone who arrives to learn, to contribute where possible and to learn. In doing so, LoST becomes a shared act of care, one that strengthens community resilience and nurtures sustainable futures. It is a quiet but powerful form of solidarity: with land, with people and with time.
The LoST Network of the LST Collaboration Hub shares experiences of being LoST and reflections on our contributions to sustaining community and landscape resilience through our travels, our actions, our travel practices and our ethics. When it launches, you can get to it from here.
The LoST site has more specific information on LoST and what it means. You can go to the LoST site here.
