Two weeks ago, I made a pilgrimage of sorts. Back to a village I went to as a high school exchange student in Germany with my host parents. It was an artist village called Worpswede not too far from Bremen. And it is famous for artists like Paula Modersohn-Becker, Fritz Mackensen, and the poet Rilke. Back in 1982, we walked around the village, looked at the art in the museum and had coffee and cake at the “crazy café.” On that trip I took a photo of a road leading to a meadow and woods.

Flash forward to my senior year in college. I have an art class called Methods and Materials and our final project is a self-portrait –but we can’t put our likeness in the image—we must find a place that represents who we are on the inside—and sketch that place until ‘you are the place are interchangeable.’

I pulled out the photo of the road from Worpswede, and I began to draw over and over. I identified with the road, as someone who already traveled abroad. As someone who was always seeking, wanting to learn more. As someone who left their home in search of a new one. As someone who was about to graduate college and was headed into a journey of the unknown.

I chose to draw the portrait in charcoal in black and white. It was, in some ways, the outline of a portrait. The bones or skeleton of a portrait. The color and the background would fill in later. With experience. With struggle. With love. The portrait, framed, hangs in my house, as it has, for most of my adult life.

So, two weeks ago my host cousin graciously took me on an adventure back to Worpswede. She’d never been there, and I wanted to see the art and the village as an adult. I’d begun my trip in Copenhagen and Amsterdam with a friend, seeing beautiful art and grand museums, and it felt like the perfect circle to finish my trip in an artist village. But there was something else. I wanted to find my road again. I wanted to visit the road like an old friend. I wanted to connect with that part of me that I saw as my essential self when I was 22.

But finding my “self”, my road proved much more difficult than I had anticipated. Much had changed since 1982. There were new museums, restaurants, cafes, and stores. My cousin and I set out on a self-guided walking tour that took us each historical site on the map—going to the landmarks and museums. And on every road and path, and around every turn I looked for ‘my road.’ I looked forward and behind me. I squinted. I erased houses in my mind. I was trying to find the picture. I was trying to find myself. But every path and road was surrounded by trees and forest. There were no meadows without forests. There were no open roads. The landscape was completely different.

For most of the day I kept thinking I just hadn’t found the right view. and then I did the math. It had been 44 years since I was in that village. Forty-four years since I took that picture. And now I realized that a 44-year-old tree is a very big tree. None of these ‘old’ forests I were there when I was a high school student. Nature, itself, had drawn all over my portrait.

Growth happens in such small increments. I know, logically, that I am not exactly the same as I was when I was 17 when I saw that road for the first time. And I am not the same as I was when I was 22 and drew the road as my portrait. But because I was painting my essence, my core, as I knew it then—because I had drawn the road so much that we were interchangeable -- I somehow believed that the road had remained unchanged. And I guess, I even believed that about myself.

What does it even mean to try to take in the ways you’ve changed or grown? It’s easy to see a tree that wasn’t there. It’s harder to imagine what’s grown inside yourself. Are the new trees in my landscape people who have come into my life and made it richer? Taught me, loved me, and helped me be the person I am? Are the trees in my landscape things that I haven’t paid attention to? Beliefs, myths, habits that are crowding out what needs to grow next?

Is my landscape richer now? Yes. Do I miss a simpler landscape? Sometimes.

If I had to do that assignment again—I wonder what landscape I would I choose. Would I choose a road again? Maybe. I still love landscapes. But the perspective is different now. The road is no longer the main figure: it’s just a part of a bigger landscape. So much has filled in around it. Sprung up beside it. There’s more horizon. More sky.

A pilgrimage is an act of journeying to an important place. A holy place. Sometimes defined as the ‘journey of life.’ The road ahead of you. The road inside of you. Even if it’s hard to recognize again.