THE LUXURY OF RETURNING

We live in an era that’s thrilled by first times, new destinations and spots to collect. But knowing a place means going back: seeing the same mountain covered in snow and during the thaw; recognising a scent, a voice who recognises us too. There’s a luxury that can’t be planned and built in months: the luxury of continuity, of memory, of a place that’s been waiting for us.
 


Some places we arrive at; others we come back to, at a certain point in our lifetime. It isn’t the number of visits that matters. When we return to a place, or to a road we first travelled many years ago, we carry the memory of who we used to be. Simply looking around, scanning the garden for a tree we remembered, can be enough to understand how much time has passed, without needing to check a calendar.
October has come, and the season is turning.
We live in an era that’s thrilled by first times, new destinations, just-launched restaurants and hot spots to add to one’s personal atlas. It’s as though a trip acquires more value when it includes places that are missing from our collection. This constant race towards the new means that we rush through countless new spots, spending too little time in each one for it to become part of us; because knowing somewhere means seeing the same mountain covered in snow and during the thaw; recognising a familiar scent; noticing that in September, the light falls differently on the meadows than it does in June.
Autumn is here, and the evening air is cool and crisp. In ‘A Fortune-teller once told me’ Tiziano Terzani wrote, “Every place is a goldmine. You have only to give yourself time”. I find this a beautiful definition of the relationship we hope to cultivate with a place, for a goldmine only reveals what it holds to those who enter it, dig, return, and dedicate their time to it. Whereas a quick visit only reveals the surface, which may well be very beautiful, but is not enough to create that familiarity which grows slowly and ends up resembling affection.
The crisp evening air is fragrant with chestnuts and even the mistral in Val d’Orcia; it carries the scent of snow, well before the first flakes have fallen in the mountains.
Our Houses change too, as living things tend to; those returning ten or twenty years after their last visit might notice a new breakfast room, a bedroom that wasn’t there before, someone whose face shows the time that’s passed, or perhaps someone else who is no longer there. And it’s precisely in this blend of what was and what is that one of hospitality’s deepest truths is born; because feeling recognised when we return to a place where we once left a part of ourselves matters far more than finding every detail unchanged. Perfect preservation is something only paintings can achieve.
There’s a kind of luxury that hinges upon the beauty of the materials, the space, the service, the care, and everything that goes into making a stay extraordinary; and there’s another kind that can’t be planned and built in a matter of months, because it requires years of continuity and memory. It’s the luxury of stepping over the threshold and knowing exactly where the sunlight falls in the afternoon; recalling the taste of a cake eaten long ago; or recognising a voice and finding that the voice recognises our own. In recent years, new hotels have sprung up, new destinations are becoming sought-after, and new possibilities are constantly urging us to travel somewhere new. But within this abundance, it’s also worth preserving the value of continuity, because not everything that’s worth experiencing necessarily has to be new. In fact, some of the most precious things become truly meaningful when we’re able to rediscover them.
We are getting ready. Some doors have been left ajar, and seem closed.
The luxury of travel takes us far away; now and again, the luxury of returning allows us to feel that a place has been there waiting for us, continuing to live its own life while we were gone. How lovely to think that someone there will recognise us.
No door is ever truly closed. It is autumn now, but tomorrow winter will return.
It will be good to see one another again.
.m