In storytelling, a throughline is the line of force that carries a narrative forward. It’s the path a story naturally wants to take—the most direct route from premise to resolution. When it’s sound, everything else can hang from it. When it’s unexamined, the story still moves, but it moves by gravity rather than judgment.

Enduring paths are shaped, not followed.

In the natural world, there’s a closely related idea: the fall line.

It wasn’t that long ago that a new trail began to appear across a slope that had previously been accessed only by a steeper line. At first, it wasn’t really a trail at all—just deep horse and elk tracks pressed into late-spring mud once the frost finally let go. I noticed it immediately. Their instincts mirrored my own.

I’m not one to cut new trails willy-nilly, but something felt right about this one. Necessary, even. So I gathered rocks and branches and gently blocked off the old path—deeply rutted from years of runoff and spinning mountain-bike tires. It had done its job, but not well. And it wasn’t especially kind to the hillside it crossed.

The new line, I sensed, would do the job of a trail better. It wouldn’t turn into a rock-rolling chute every time it rained, thawed, or baked dry. It would shed water instead of concentrating it. It would endure.

Which, over time, it has.

The old route is now grown over—quietly restored to match the grasses and brush around it, as if it had never been there at all.

The other day, I drove up the canyon to “check if it’s still there,” or so I told my daughter on the phone as I accelerated.

I didn’t have a question in mind as I drove. There’s always something waiting at home—unfinished work, loose worries—and lately there’s even the broader concern of what the winter hasn’t delivered up that way. But none of that explained the drive. It happened almost without forethought or consent.

“He does this daily,” my wife might say.

That possibility hadn’t crossed my mind until I reached the end of my favorite side canyon and turned around.

That turn was familiar. Too familiar.

I didn’t linger. I didn’t get out of the car. I simply pointed the hood back toward home and headed down-canyon, the way I have so many times before. And that’s when it surfaced—not as an accusation, just as a noticing.

I come here a lot.

I first learned to read the clock in abouts.

Half past. Quarter till. Top of the hour. About nine o’clock.

Before atomic time and the internet, even the first digital watches got ahead of or trailed exact time. You adjusted them by feel. A minute fast. A little slow. The clock wasn’t wrong; it was close enough. Time was something you read, not something you obeyed.

It’s harder now for many people to know what the big and little hands on a clock are trying to say. Exactness has become the way we tell time.

Nature, meanwhile, never made that switch.

Seasons arrive early or late. Storms hesitate, double back, or come all at once. Rivers don’t keep appointments. Even light bends, scatters, and arrives with variation. The natural world works in ranges and thresholds—not because it is careless, but because it is alive.

So are we.

A few weeks ago, I was with my family up the canyon, wandering along a shallow creek. Jack had already tried to jump the creek three times before we arrived. His boots were soaked, pants dripping halfway up his waist. The water was cold—mountain-runoff cold. But he wasn’t bothered. He was delighted. He kept talking about the third jump, how close he’d been, how next time he knew he’d make it.

The discomfort didn’t register; the possibility did.

Watching him, something in me stirred—not envy, but recognition. I remember what that felt like.

It made me think about what it means to play—not the structured kind, not hobbies or recreation, but the unfiltered movement and curiosity kids access without hesitation. I see it every time I’m around anyone under twenty. They move freely, as if their bodies and the world are still in active conversation. Their prefrontal cortex is still developing, dopamine still hits like rocket fuel, and risk exists mostly as a concept—not a barrier. They live one step from a flow state.