Why We Keep Going Back

There’s a trail I return to every season, a loop I could probably walk blindfolded by now. It is inarguably beautiful in its own way, but it isn’t the type of location that photographers flock to in search of a perfect shot. It doesn’t lead to a summit with a view that stops you in your tracks. It’s not even particularly challenging. But still, I go back. Over and over, as if it has something left to teach me.

We like to think of adventure as forward motion—new trails, new peaks, new places to pin on a map. But there’s a quiet magic in revisiting the familiar. The way the same bend in the path looks different in morning mist than in the amber glow of late autumn. The way a tree, unnoticed one year, suddenly commands attention when it bursts into bloom. The way a light dusting of snow can transform the entire vista. Returning again and again, we begin to see not only how the landscape changes, but how we have changed in relation to it.

There’s comfort in this repetition, in the knowledge that some places hold us steady. Maybe we go back because the world is unpredictable, and a well-worn trail offers a rare kind of certainty. I certainly spent many hours on this particular trail during the frightening uncertainty of the early days of the COVID pandemic. Maybe we go back as a meditation on past happy times spent trodding that beloved path, recalling adventures with with friends or even alone. Or maybe it’s something deeper—the recognition that familiarity doesn’t have to mean stagnation. That walking the same path never really means walking the same path.

When we return to a place, we carry with us the echoes of every version of ourselves that has walked there before. My first steps on that trail were uncertain - would I get lost? What if I made a wrong turn? Now, I move through that same spot with a different rhythm, feeling the quiet satisfaction of a stronger stride. The landscape remains the same, but I have changed, and so the trail offers me something new.

I’ve noticed that the more I revisit a place, the more I start to appreciate the subtleties—the small, overlooked wonders that escape notice on a first or second trip. The way the light filters through a gap in the trees at a certain time of day. The scent of wet earth after the season’s first thaw. The quiet companionship of a particular bird whose song has become a familiar backdrop to my steps. These things don’t reveal themselves on a single journey; they unfold slowly, over time, to those who linger.

In a world that prizes novelty and speed, we don’t often talk about the joy of staying put—of deepening our relationship with a place rather than rushing off to the next one. There’s a pressure, even in outdoor adventure, to keep moving, to collect experiences like notches on a belt, to treat a fresh map like a to-do list that needs to be checked off. But there’s another kind of adventure in staying, in paying attention, in letting a place etch itself into you. We return not just for the comfort of the known, but for the surprises that arise when we look closer.

And sometimes, returning is an act of memorializing. I know hikers who return to the same trails year after year to honor something—an anniversary, a loss, a milestone. There’s something profoundly grounding about placing your footsteps where they once were, marking time not in dates on a calendar but in layers of experience woven into the landscape.

A trail, after all, is not just a strip of earth worn down by footsteps. It’s a record of presence, of movement, of stories left behind in scuffed boots and scattered leaves. And when we walk it again and again, we are not just retracing our steps—we are continuing a conversation, one that deepens with each return.

So I keep going back. To that loop I know by heart, to the trail that has seen me in all my seasons. Not because I have nowhere new to go, but because there’s still more to see, still more to learn, still more of myself to meet along the way.