How returning to the same view, the same story, can be an act of faith — not a failure of imagination

This essay was originally published by Pen with Paper on Medium (December 2025). Read it on Medium here.

Another day, another picture of a mountain sunrise. I look back at my photos over the past few weeks and wonder if I’m in a rut. Different versions of the same mountains, the same valley, the same back roads home from the hospital. Am I bordering on stale? Am I sticking too close to my comfort zone?

Maybe I take photos of the mountains every day because they’re the truest thing I know. Their shapes never change, even as the colors shift from dawn gold to evening indigo. I call it a rut, but maybe it’s a groove — a record my life keeps spinning, the needle dropping into a familiar song.

There’s comfort in the predictable silhouette of those ridges, in returning to their forms for inspiration again and again. Sometimes I wonder if I need new sights. Maybe I’m stuck in the same old landscape.

My novels are set in the same mountain town. I’m searching for an agent, and as I look over my body of work, I worry I’ve gotten too comfortable there, in my fictional town of Radiant. What if an agent never bites? What if Radiant never comes alive on the page for other people? Will I need to expand my literary horizons, too?

But maybe it’s not stagnation to come back to the same view, the same town. Other writers do it — literary icons I’ve worshipped for years: Louise Erdrich, Elizabeth Strout, Kent Haruf. Even Faulkner had Yoknapatawpha County. Is it wrong to write what we know best? What we love best?

Maybe it’s a kind of worship, my own special prayer. A way to say: I’m still here, and these stories matter. And even on days when everything else feels uncertain — when I fear I’ll never share my stories beyond my family and friends — the mountains hold their shape. The stories will, too. If I keep showing up.

So am I in a rut? I don’t think so. Maybe rut is just another name for home.

So I’ll keep taking pictures of my mountains and my valley, looking at them in awe of their beauty. And I’ll keep writing about the folks in Radiant, listening for the wisdom in their voices.

That’s not to say I reject other landscapes, or that I’ll never travel beyond the mountains for my inspiration. Or that I’ll never write about another place. For now, I think I’m right where I belong — writing about what I know, and finding new truths when I listen closely.

This small ritual — a photo, a moment, a little quiet awe at dawn — is enough to steady me, even when the rest of life feels uncertain. Maybe that’s the real gift of coming home, over and over: finding something that never stops giving, as long as you keep looking.

more essays