The Question Persists
Longbranch Farm & Trails · September 25, 2026
What I especially enjoy about these walks is that they give my mind time to wander, to reflect, to synthesize recent experiences and correlate them with the greater timeline of my life. I guess you could say hiking here has become a sort of meditative, self-reflective workplace. Since arriving in Cincinnati, I've done some of my most meaningful thinking while walking these trails.
While moseying down the Firefly Trail, heading toward my usual route, a particular little thought started circling my mind between stops to take photographs. I won't bog you down with the maturation process, but eventually I arrived at something like: What is the hardest, most comprehensive work on the self one can do? And then, as I am so predictable to do, I turned the question on myself.
Well past the edge of the woods, beneath the tree canopy and its deep shadow, shafts of afternoon light cut through to the woodland floor. I would pause to consider the potential of a photograph, sometimes taking the opportunity. One such opportunity was the red berries. As I did, I asked myself another question in response to the first: Well, what sort of tools do you use to solve problems?
While giving that question some thought, I continued onto the Woodpecker Trail, where there's a bench overlooking a wide-open field. By the time I reached it, I had taken stock of some of the more consequential problems in my life and how I've attempted to process them with the tools on hand.
Sitting there, I remembered that this work often required me to look at something I believed about myself, something I had done, or something that had happened to me. Sometimes that meant examining my own motives, failures, contradictions, assumptions; the list goes on.
Ultimately, the tool I came to use was a form of calculated, verified acceptance. Sure, the all-too-often acknowledgment that the past can't be rewritten. But a more meaningful use of that tool was: yes, I am responsible for past iterations of myself, and no, they are not a permanent definition of each versional successor. Or rather, they don't have to be. Maybe even that they shouldn't be.
I reached for my notebook and, alas, remembered it was sitting on my nightstand. So I left the bench and kept walking. On the return trip, the thought stayed with me. I was less concerned with answering the original question by then than I was with understanding what, exactly, I had been describing.
What tools help me remain an accurate witness to my life when the person doing the observing is also the person being observed? And when my understanding changes, what am I now required to do? Hmm.
By then I had nearly made my way through the woods and onto the final stretch to the parking lot. I had started the walk wondering about the hardest work one could do on the self. I left with a different question: By what process have I arrived at who I presently understand myself to be, and what should happen when that understanding changes? I didn't have an answer by the time I left the trail.
The walk concluded. The question persists. Isn't that exciting?
