One of the best parts of taking kids on adventures is the magical mixture of experiencing a place for yourself while also rediscovering the world through their eyes.

This summer my family loaded into a battered old RV and set out on the great American road trip. We headed south and west to the Grand Canyon, turned right, and worked our way up the Continental Divide through some of the wildest and most beautiful places we could find. We spent five weeks immersed in nature and visited ten national parks.

It was breathtaking: the mountains, the wildlife, the unplugged and uninterrupted time together.

We watched storms give way to rainbows in the Grand Canyon, avalanches roar off alpine glaciers in the Canadian Rockies, grizzly bears wrestle, and a wolf pup cautiously explore the meadows of Yellowstone.

I don’t know what it feels like to be a deeply religious Muslim making a pilgrimage to Mecca, but this trip felt like the closest thing I’ve experienced. For someone who loves the natural world, standing on a windswept summit, walking quietly through an old-growth forest, or watching the full moon rise over the desert feels something like being on holy ground. I know how incredibly fortunate I am to have experienced it.

I thought those moments would be what stayed with me. Instead, I keep thinking about a bird’s nest in a houseplant on our front porch.

We are back home. We’re back to work and play dates, laundry and lawn mowing, in a place where everything feels familiar. But for my kids, the wonder wasn’t attached to the places we’d visited. Somehow, it had followed them home.

“One of my favorite feelings is something I call second hand rediscovery,” Jedediah Jenkins writes in his book Streams to the Ocean. “It happens when you show someone the things and places you love, but for them it’s the first time.

You may have seen the place a million times, yet when you go there with a friend, you see it through their eyes and discover it for yourself all over again. In fact, you almost discover it better. In the sparkling eyes of your friend, you live both the astonishment of something new, and the intimacy of something known all at once.”

Every week at NorthBay, I get to watch students discover the Chesapeake Bay for the first time. Their eyes go wide as they spot an osprey circling overhead, catch their first frog, or watch the sun set over the water. Places I’ve walked hundreds of times suddenly feel new again because I’m seeing them through someone else’s wonder. It reminds me that environmental education isn’t just about teaching ecology. It’s about creating the conditions for wonder—and inviting others to rediscover the world alongside you.

Keeping a sense of awe in everyday life is hard. Familiarity slowly smooths the edges off even the most beautiful places. But kids have a remarkable ability to interrupt that process. They notice what we’ve stopped noticing. They ask questions we’ve forgotten to ask. Every bird, puddle, insect, and strange-looking mushroom still deserves a closer look.

One of the greatest gifts we receive as parents and teachers is an invitation.

An invitation to rediscover the world alongside them.

A few days after we got home, my daughter burst through the back door.

“Dad, I have to show you something!”

A Carolina wren had built a nest in an overgrown houseplant on our porch, tucked between leaves that had stretched wild in the summer heat. I probably would have smiled, admired it for a moment, and moved on. But seeing that tiny nest—and the impossibly small baby birds—through the excitement of my kids made it feel magical.

I drove 9,000 miles this summer to introduce my kids to the wild places I love.

Now they’re introducing me to home.

They’re helping me rediscover the comfortable corners of the house where it’s perfect to curl up with a book, the familiar rhythm of neighbors gathering outside on summer evenings, the joy of begging for one more trip for ice cream, and the little pockets of wildness that have been hiding in our houseplants all along.

After seeing the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Glacier, and the Canadian Rockies, Winden summed it up better than I ever could: “Dad I just love where we live. I love how green the woods are. I love that it’s hot in the summer and we can swim in the creeks. I love that it snows in the winter. And… we have the best friends.”