Keep What's Behind You, Behind You

There’s a certain hush that settles over Eureka Springs at the end of the year.

It isn’t dramatic. It doesn’t announce itself. It just … arrives.

You feel it in the way the fog lingers longer in the mornings, as if the hills themselves aren’t quite ready to move on yet. You notice it when the sidewalks empty earlier, when shopkeepers flip their signs to 'closed' with a little less urgency, when conversations soften instead of sharpen. The town exhales, and if you’re paying attention, you find yourself doing the same.

This is the season when Eureka Springs stops performing and simply is.

And somehow, without ever saying a word, it reminds you that you don’t have to carry everything with you into what comes next.

The Year Doesn’t End All at Once

The year doesn’t end on December 31st. Not really.

It ends in pieces - quiet ones you don’t notice right away. It ends when the last guest room finally empties after the holidays. When the final strand of lights comes down and the buildings return to their natural glow. When the calendar pages change but your body hasn’t quite caught up yet.

Here, the end of the year feels less like a finish line and more like a long, gentle slope downward. A slow descent into stillness.

Eureka Springs has always understood this rhythm. The town was never built for straight lines or fast exits. It bends. It curves. It takes its time. Even the staircases seem to suggest that you’re meant to pause halfway up, turn around, and look at where you’ve been before continuing forward. I did that recently and that’s exactly when it hit me: "Keep what’s behind you, behind you."

Not Everything Follows You Forward

We’ve been conditioned to believe that everything must come with us.

Every lesson, every scar, every misstep meticulously cataloged and reviewed, as though forgetting is a form of failure. We replay the year like surveillance footage, zooming in on moments we wish we had handled differently, conversations we should have worded better, paths we didn’t take when we had the chance.

But Eureka Springs doesn’t live that way.

The town doesn’t rehearse its past. It doesn’t explain itself to newcomers or justify the decisions that shaped it. It simply stands (brick by brick, step by step) comfortable with what came before. Sure, we remember the past and what shaped Eureka Springs. We honor those early days with preservation, ghost tours, and story telling, yet, Eurekans are unconcerned with dragging it all into the present. It is what it is my friends in all it's charm.

Some buildings were once hotels. Some were hospitals. Some were boarding houses, schools, places of healing, places of grief. Their histories are still there, woven into the walls. But they aren’t demanded.

They’re honored … and then allowed to rest and there’s something deeply reassuring about that.

Over the years, end-of-year reflection has developed a harsh reputation with how we treat ourselves. We sit ourselves down like a defendant in our own courtroom, replaying evidence, assigning blame, delivering verdicts. We scrutinize productivity, relationships, choices, timing. We ask ourselves why we weren’t faster, braver, smarter, more disciplined, more certain.

But reflection doesn’t have to be a reckoning.

In Eureka Springs, reflection looks different. It looks like walking without a destination. Like noticing how the mist settles in the valleys but never quite touches the tops of the hills. Like recognizing that even the most weathered buildings still stand, not because they resisted change, but because they adapted to it.

Eureka Springs doesn’t punish itself for being what it once needed to be.

Neither should you.

The Weight of Old Versions

By the time December arrives, many of us are exhausted because we’re still carrying versions of ourselves that were only meant to be temporary.

The version that stayed quiet to keep the peace.

The version that overperformed to feel safe.

The version that survived something difficult and never quite stood down afterward.

These versions aren’t failures. They were necessary once. They kept you moving. They kept you intact. But necessity has an expiration date.

Eureka Springs doesn’t ask every era to continue indefinitely. It lets them age. It lets them evolve. It lets them become something else entirely.

A nightly motel on 62 becomes apartments. A carriage path becomes a walking trail. A bank becomes a jewelry shop. A delicious breakfast joint becomes a vape shop and a sense of urgency becomes a place of rest.

You are allowed the same evolution, my friend.

Memory

Ironically, I seem to constantly have to remind myself that memory isn’t meant to shackle you. It’s meant to inform you.

Eureka Springs doesn't forget to remember. Oh, it remembers, it's just selective about what it remembers. It remembers craftsmanship. Community. Creativity. The kind of resilience that doesn’t harden into bitterness. The kind of endurance that leaves room for joy.

Eureka doesn’t cling to what went wrong. It doesn’t replay every flood, every fire, every economic downturn as proof of fragility. It lets those moments shape the architecture without defining the identity.

That’s the difference between remembering and reliving.

You don’t have to carry every moment forward to honor it.

Eureka Springs places its past carefully. It doesn’t bury it, but it doesn’t trip over it either. It builds around it. Above it. Sometimes straight through it ... and that kind of balance takes trust.

There’s no pressure here to arrive in January fully formed. No expectation that you’ve figured everything out for the New Year ahead. No demand that you declare your intentions loudly or convincingly.

Eureka Springs doesn’t rush into what’s next. It strolls. It waits. It trusts that the path will reveal itself, curve by curve.

You don’t owe the New Year a perfected version of yourself.

You owe yourself honesty ... and rest.

Some things are worth carrying forward.

The laughter that surprised you. The boundaries you finally honored. The moments when you chose kindness; especially toward yourself. These things don’t weigh you down. They steady you. They belong with you.

And then there’s everything else.

The self-judgment that outlived its usefulness. The expectations that were never truly yours. The roles you played because you didn’t know you could choose differently.

You can acknowledge them. You can thank them.

And then you can let them stay where they are as you trod along.

As the year loosens its grip, Eureka Springs grows quieter, not because it’s empty, but because it’s listening and if you let it, the town teaches you that moving forward doesn’t require force. It requires trust.

Endings

Some friendships fade without conflict. Some dreams soften into something quieter than you expected. Some goals reveal themselves to be stepping stones rather than destinations.

Here, endings happen without spectacle.

A shop closes, and another opens months later. A season passes, and the town adjusts. No dramatic announcements. No collective panic. Just movement.

There’s comfort in realizing that not everything needs to be processed publicly or understood immediately. Some things end because their time is done. And that’s enough.

If you walk the hills here long enough, you learn a practical truth: carrying too much makes the climb harder than it needs to be.

So you adjust. You set things down. You slow your pace.

At the end of the year, life invites you to do the same.

To notice what you’re still gripping out of habit rather than necessity. To ask yourself (quietly and honestly) what actually deserves to come with you.

Not everything does. And realizing that isn’t failure. It’s wisdom.

So, friends, 2025 is behind us as the calendar turns. I wish each of you the very best yet to come and may you resist the urge to drag everything with you.

Keep the lessons.

Keep the love.

Keep the joy.

And let what’s behind you remain peacefully, respectfully and exactly where it belongs.

Behind you.❤️