Ritual and repetition when life feels unpredictable:

Hiking the same trail six times in three months

“I love ritual and repetition. Without them, I would be a balloon with a slow leak.” – Anne Lamott

Entering into this season of ritual, I think there are divided camps. Some love tradition and want the holidays to be the same every year, and others crave variety.

I grew up as a ritual lover. I didn’t want a thing to change from one holiday to the next, from the dishes served at Thanksgiving, to timing of our annual Ten Days of Christmas singalong on Christmas Eve, to the pace of presents handed out on Christmas Day.

I can’t say that I’ve shed my love of ritual since then, but I’ve learned to loosen my resistance to change. I’ve had to. As the starkest example, two dear cousins and my brother Ben are now missing from our Christmas Eve table. My aunt who had a stroke last January always hosted on Christmas Day, and this year she won’t be able to. It pains me that for all of these changes, I never knew which holiday was the last of the Before Times. But in the After Times, I have more understanding of the way life works: Things change, and then they change again.

I also married someone who likes novelty much more than me. In my twenty years with David, we’ve rarely hiked the same trail twice. I never once remember him mentioning a holiday tradition he wanted to keep.

But this fall, in part in response to unexpected change in everything from holiday plans to work, I found a new way to sneak repetition into the cracks: I committed us to hiking the exact same trail together as a family six times this fall. Six is no magic number—it’s simply the number of weekend days I thought we could make it happen.

David was skeptical at first.

“Look, I’ve already mapped out all the weekends we can do it,” I said in early September.

He shook his head and smiled.

“No, this will be great,” I added. “We can really experience fall this way, seeing the colors change in the same spots.”

I don’t know that he actually thought we’d do it, but I finally got him to nod.

Same view from our six hikes this fall

Having just finished the last of the six hikes, I’ll say this: I can’t speak for David and Noa, but I’d do it again. Because my body knew what to expect, my senses became more engaged with each hike. I learned to listen for the sound of the little stream three-quarters of the way through the hike. I knew to take a deep breath near the aspens where the woodsy smell was strongest.

Life is unpredictable, and traditions don’t always stick. Each of us has our own preferred balance of novelty and repetition. But I’ve found that when the uncertainty and novelty increase in some areas of my life, I crave more of the comfort of the familiar in others. My family takes a hike, and then we take it again.

Speaking of novelty, I’ll be taking a break next week while traveling to Costa Rica for my first vacation with just David and Noa in three years (too long!). The Creative Sort will be back on Friday, December 6.