Have you ever thought about going back in time? I have. Not in the literal sense — although sometimes it feels like I did.
Before you dispatch the men in white suits with butterfly nets, let me explain.
I was at Disney with my kids a while back, walking down Main Street, when a sudden wave of happiness hit me hard enough to make me stop walking. Which is saying something, because I’m not a fan of crowds. Or people, for that matter. So the fact that I was genuinely happy in the middle of ten thousand strangers made me stop and actually think about it.
Was it being with my kids? The smell of cookies and popcorn that somehow hits you from every direction at once? The music that’s simultaneously loud and barely noticeable? Watching my kids lose their minds over something I’d seen a hundred times?
Probably all of it. But also something else.
I’ve been going to Disney since I was three years old. I couldn’t give you an accurate count of how many times I’ve been back since. What I’ve realized is that the place has stayed essentially the same through the years — and walking into it triggers something deep. Core memories from childhood that carry their own emotional charge, still intact after all this time. It’s repeatable. I’ve tested it. Even in the dead of summer, which is saying a lot.
So I started thinking about my other happy places.
The moment I step foot into my skiff, something shifts. Doesn’t matter what mood I’m in or how bad the day was before I got there. I’ve had days on the water where I damn near died and still felt a kind of contentment that’s hard to explain. Part of that might’ve been relief at still being alive — but happy nonetheless.
There’s probably some psychological term for what’s happening. I don’t care enough to look it up. What I know is that something in my brain transports me back the instant I’m out there. Maybe to the first bonefish I ever caught — a ten-plus-pounder, after failing time and time again. No adults. No fancy gear. Just two kids slugging it out with nature in the backcountry of the Keys, on a flat that felt like it belonged to us alone. The feeling of that fish coming tight after so many failed attempts is still right there, still vivid, like it’s been waiting for me to come back and get it.
The Glades do the same thing, maybe even more intensely. The landscape, the smells, the sounds — all of it works together to cement moments so deep in your subconscious that they don’t fade with time, they just wait. I can return to the exact spot where I lost a fish twenty years ago and still feel that moment. The spot has changed — mangroves tend to grow — but the memory doesn’t move.
The woods work the same way. Put me in a tree stand before first light and everything slows down. The particular cold of a November morning, the way sound carries differently in bare timber, the feeling of waiting for something that may or may not come — it all pulls me back to every other morning I’ve sat in the dark waiting for shooting light. The memories stack on top of each other until it feels less like hunting and more like visiting.
I’ve wondered what’s actually happening in those moments. Whether it’s core memories being triggered, or something older than that — a pull toward a natural state that feels right because it actually is. Maybe we feel most like ourselves in wild places because that’s where we’re supposed to be. I don’t think that’s too far-fetched.
What I do know is that not everyone’s time machine looks the same. Some people walk into a city and feel exactly what I feel on the water — alive, at home, where they belong. I can’t fathom it, but I’ve met enough of them to know it’s real. We all have a place that puts us back together. Mine just happens to involve mud, salt water, and a push pole.
I don’t know if it’s memory, instinct, or just the simple result of doing what you love. Maybe it’s all of those things at once.
But whatever it is — whatever that feeling is when the skiff slides off the trailer and the water comes up around the hull and something in your chest just settles — I know this much.
I need more of it.