About Grayson Haver Currin
Welcome to Out + Back, my newsletter about music and hiking and maybe cooking and living, too. But why is it called Out + Back?
Whether you’re hiking, biking, running, or whatever, an out-and-back works the same way: You head out some distance in one direction, and then you head back that same distance in the other direction to return to your point of origin.
For a very long time, I hated out-and-backs, because I thought they meant repeating myself, traversing terrain I’d already seen and perhaps even already understood for a second time. I preferred the loop, where every step took me somewhere else, or especially the point-to-point—or “thru”—hike. I’ve walked more than 10,000 miles on such thru-hikes, and one aspect I covet is that they are ever-new, gradually revealing a landscape yet unseen.