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This Thanksgiving, after two full days of tweeting from the Denver airport, I went to visit my family in Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C. It’s an area filled with tourist attractions, from the many esteemed Smithsonian museums and national memorials to the performing arts at the Kennedy Center and live music in clubs all over the city. But despite all this, the thing I almost always do when I’m there is go to the decidedly unflashy C&O Canal towpath and take a walk, no matter what the season.

There is absolutely no development around the canal, and it’s protected by the National Park Service. Along the towpath, you’ll see plenty of D.C. power players out and about taking a stroll, riding their bikes, and walking their dogs. But this weekend, not once did I see someone at the canal talking on their cellphone—even in the hectic world of “inside the beltway,” it’s the kind of place where you escape all that. Everyone is interacting with nature and with each other. Even my parents’ dog, who we took along with us, got a certain happy spring in his step as soon as his paws touched down on the towpath trail.

It parallels the path of the Potomac River and stretches for 184 miles, at times calm and idyllic, other times roiling and raging. Each time I visit, something small has changed, whether it’s the water level or the color and amount of the leaves. This time, it was a stretch of day-glo algae that turned part of the canal a green so opaque it looked almost as if you could walk upon it.

Over the years, my many visits to the canal have included school field trips to ride a historic mule-pulled barge, hikes along the rock-lined Billy Goat Trail, and family outings with my sisters when we’d pose for pictures in half-hollowed out logs. I’ve seen rare birds, sunning turtles, and once a squiggly harmless snake. I’ve startled deer, interrupted flocks of butterflies, and been bitten there by many a summertime mosquito, yet I always keep going back.

Forgive me now for quoting Ferris Bueller, but he's right when he says: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop to look around once in awhile you might miss it.” To me, the canal towpath is that perfect place to stop and look around. When I visit my hometown, I like it that some things stay the same, and nothing seems so constant to me as the C&O Canal. Do you have any places like that? Places you visit, that you can call home?

Photo courtesy of IgoUgo member BawBaw.