Sometimes I wonder if I am the anachronism.

This weekend brought a short and windy return of winter bluster, capping off what had been a nice stretch of seasonally warm weather and visions of spring. Friday evening it was moderately cold, but the blasts of wind roaring over the eastern ridge made even reasonable temps in the 40s feel bone-chillingly cold. Each night over the weekend, we covered up our new ferns with bedsheets, our front porch looking more suitable for Halloween than spring.

We’ve just capped off an entire week of houseguests. Kel’s parents stayed with us for several days to celebrate Annie and Julia’s birthdays, and then my Mom came up Friday and stayed the weekend. It was our first opportunity to deploy the little guest apartment in the detached garage, and everything seemed to work brilliantly.

Our house in Statesville closed a week ago, and Kelly and I can both feel the difference. Although mildly surreal to now be wholly detached from what we both considered our hometown, it’s still a relief to have the stress of selling a house behind us, to not worry about keeping up with two mortgages, and to cash that check. We’ve got a few projects in mind here in Sylva.

Starting with a trampoline, which arrived this week and which Thomas helped Kelly begin assembling on that blustery Friday evening. We had it finished by Saturday, and not even a cold wind could keep the kids from boinging around in their sock feet, their cheeks red and lips chapped by sunset.

Yesterday morning we said goodbyes to my Mom, watched the Trinity livestream, then had a quick lunch at the house. That afternoon we continued what I hope will become a bit of a tradition: the Sunday hike.

Last weekend we ventured up Waterrock Knob, a relatively short hike (not much more than a mile long up and down) but one that provides a steep ascent from the trailhead to the peak about 450 feet up. It had probably been 20 years since I last climbed the trail, and I was quickly reminded that hiking at 40 is not like hiking at 20. The kiddos, on the other hand, bounded up like mountain goats. Soon, though, we were taking photos from the top, admiring the sea of ridges stretching out before us. Kel thought it was a bit like standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon–the chance to peer across so much vast terrain.

This weekend we went for a longer walk with virtually zero inclination and made a lap around Lake Junaluska, another place I haven’t visited in 20 years or longer. These experiences–returning to places long ago left–have all been uniquely interesting. In some ways, the time hasn’t seemed to change much at all, but of course two decades is enough time. Trees can actually grow a discernable amount in 20 years. The earth can move.

At Junaluska, I was reminded that one of the last times I was there, I’d brought a film camera that could make panoramic exposures. Having just completed the exercise of packing all our earthly possessions into boxes and then redistributing them at a new house, I believe I know where a few of those panoramic prints are, and I’m curious now to dig them out to see what’s what. I know there are photos from Whiteside Mountain in a pile in a box. Now I have to just remember where the box is.

I shot a lot of black and white film then, and maybe that was an effort to make my photos seem more artistic or timeless, which in turn makes it a bit funny to think about how anachronistic of an idea it is to use a film camera on a hike. Certainly a different time, especially as I pull out my iPhone, glance through the camera roll, and can click on the exact GPS coordinates of a digital photo or video, and I can rest assured that they’ve all been uploaded into the ethereal cloud where I am led to believe true immortality resides, where I will never have to box them up and then unpack them and remember where I put them.

Lingering: the undercurrent timeless, the perpetual feeling that I’ve been here before and the quiet tremor that asks if I am the anachronism. A feeling not entirely different from the times back in Statesville when I would observe our children in a place where I, too, had been a child.

The echo of our lives intertwined, the rhyming noise, a double-exposure of past and present, brings me comfort. Here in this moment, we are a family of five, our parents just departed from a weeklong visit, our children hiking trails we hiked as young adults, photos from a different age grafted onto new shoots.

The spring blossoms, the ones so many rushed to protect with blankets from this weekend’s late frost, are ready to flower. Somewhere, some subterranean memory is pushing everyone upward, toward the sunlight, because it’s time, time for another lap around the cosmos.