People go new places for vacation because these places are different.

Or sometimes we might return to the same place year after year because it was once a new place that struck a chord with us. We love having a version of that same experience upon each return. For some people it’s Cabo or Maui. For my wife’s family it happens to be our annual horse ranch trip to British Columbia, a summer excursion well into its third decade now.

What if it’s not a vacation, but a nearby place we return to often such that it is woven into our daily or weekly routine and becomes part of the fabric of our life?

These places decorate my life. They change with the season or the decade, receding over time, but remaining in memory.

Some are long vistas from a high place like the viewpoints along the 5-mile drive in Tacoma’s Point Defiance State Park. Heather and I have run hundreds of trail miles through the park and passed by each view hundreds of times.

There is the pull-off facing north over the sound above the churning crossing to Vashon Island. Fishing boats swirl in eddies below and once during college a fox walked up to my car window and sat down. He stared at me a long time willing me to give him a bite of my Taco Bell.

No fox, it’s my bean burrito and you’re a wild animal.

Two confessions about the fox encounter.

First: I finally threw him a tiny piece of tortilla because, well… because of the eyes he made at me.

Second: I regret doing so to this day. In the scheme of big and small regrets it ranks fairly low, but still. Don’t feed the wildlife.

Farther along that same loop are views of the Narrows, a mile-wide stretch of water bisecting shorelines so long enjoined by one bridge between the city of Tacoma and the Olympic Peninsula. Now two bridges arc across this rushing, tidal expanse of saltwater, altering daily commute times and the skyline. I once paddled a canoe north along the east shoreline with my roommate Jeremy. The tidal exchange reached a point where we made exactly zero progress in passing a large and distinct log on shore so we steered around and floated back toward our dock.

Next viewpoint, Fort Nisqually, where Heather and I held our wedding rehearsal dinner. The same quiet picnic dinner where we were gently cautioned by two embarrassed police officers about drinking wine in the park. Someone had reported us. We stood amongst friends, parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles and agreed that yes, we were and sure, we’d be glad to go ahead and put it back in the car.

We miss this park dearly.

It overflows with memories of our runs there. The trails we named for the time we saw a baby deer—“Baby Deer Trail”—or for the place I was stung on the calf by a bee on a hot summer afternoon—“Bee Sting Trail.” Also, “The Spine” and “Ridge Trail.”

Last Thanksgiving holiday we scored free grandparent babysitting and returned to run in Point Defiance on Black Friday. We ran under torrential downpour along muddy trails transformed to streams. It was the opposite of fighting throngs of shoppers at the mall. Deafening, crowded commerce was nowhere in sight as we skirted puddled trails for a time and then succumbed to running straight up the middle of paths awash in four, five, six inches of late November rain.

The first few steps into puddles are freezing as water seeps through mesh. After that your feet just clomp along the trail making a sloshing sound like running on sponges.

We had dressed for the temperature, but not such rainfall. Every square inch of my polypro top clung to my skin. Gloves, soggy. Headband, underwear, running pants all drenched. We were steaming and soaked such that the car windshield never fully cleared on the ride home and I swiped one shivering hand over and over again across the glass to make my way through town.

It took an hour’s time and a long, hot shower at my in-laws to warm back up.

This was our return to a place we cherished, to trails we recognized with every twist and turn. Yet awash in one of the heaviest rains I’ve ever seen the park was new and different, just as it was safe and familiar.

We left Point Defiance behind in our move to Oregon.

Building a life in a new place often amounts to finding ways to keep some things the same.

In our new hometown we set about finding a suitable replacement forest just as we sought a stand-in for our favorite Mexican restaurant. LaCarretta on McLoughlin was about a 90% match for Mexican food and has become our go-to spot for predictable, cheesy take-out.

Tryon Creek State Park in southwest Portland became our park.

It isn’t the same.

This sense is stronger for Heather, most likely because she grew up a short few miles from Point Defiance. It was always there and always her forest. Yet in getting to know Tryon, familiarity has bred not contempt as the saying goes, but fondness, maybe love.

Running ebbs and flows in both our lives.

We have trained for a marathon and a few halves. We do the work, build up over several months, and run the race. Every time I swear it will be different, but I usually go cold turkey off the running. Something else more interesting comes to the fore. Something without so much running.

Last summer the mood struck me and I jumped back onto the trails and treated myself to a whole host of new experiences running in Tryon. I was running in stolen moments between daycare drop offs and the office or on a quick afternoon jaunt on my way back to daycare. Mostly snatches of 25 minutes here or 40 minutes there.

I saw the seasons change. I moved smoothly through shirtless days dripping sweat in warm summer months into one of my most appreciated autumns ever.

I love fall leaves.

I cherish the short weeks where the light show in the trees builds, peaks, and dissipates all too quickly. Burnt and brilliant colors carpet the trails before the leaves are soon gathered into mud beneath my sneakers.

I ran through the fall season and added thicker layers, pants, and my signature ear warmer— dorky yet utilitarian. My old wool Army surplus gloves came out of storage and I would occasionally adjust the podcast on my iPhone with the tip of my nose instead of sliding off a frosty glove and chilling my fingers. Don’t judge.

Rains came, too, just as they would in Tacoma over Thanksgiving. I drank in the sight of wet leaves glistening and bathed in the sound ten thousand drops falling to forest floor and gentle stream.

I ran long loops and short. Mostly between two and seven miles. Whatever schedule and motivation allowed.

None of the terrain was new because Heather and I ran much of our marathon training here and exhausted every route.

Nonetheless, alone and years removed from logging so much time here, it was a new park for me to learn. Familiar turns popped up along tails wholly forgotten a step before.

By late fall I found myself veering in the same direction at the beginning of most of my runs. Left from the ranger station and the first left down the switchbacks. Across a bridge and left along rolling hills above Tryon Creek. Finally right at an intersection to avoid a path that only goes up, up, up to Terwilliger and the boring, paved bike path.

Instead I follow the more gradual upward climb usually only as far as a final, low bridge across a stream. A good spot to stretch my quads—knee to knee like my chiropractor says—and smell the air. Hear the water burble. In late fall the strongest aroma was cedar saw dust along the trail from a tree downed in a storm and chain sawed into pieces that could be rolled from the path.

There is something about crossing a bridge. I often run to just this same point, but I always cross over the bridge. I’ll caress the soft bark of the cedar standing on the far side and turn back to the water to stretch.

Often as I stretch, people will run into view coming down the hill toward my return path and I will gauge how fast they’re going and whether I should light out ahead of them so I don’t end up in that awkward position of trying to pass or following someone too close along single track. I can’t enjoy my woods time running in a line of foot traffic.

Let’s be honest, most of the people this far out of the trails are faster than me anyway. Often as not I give them a minute head start and never see them again until they pass me going back the other way having looped around on some other trail, probably their own signature route.

Having a nearby place, my place, is happiness. Even if it is simultaneously many other peoples’ place, I have my own experience here. I know how the dried leaves or wet ferns smell to me. I know what the moss looks like as it clings to trees who stretch skyward and crisscross the blue sky.

I know each day will bring some of the same and something new.