Rugged, windswept, and beautiful, Croagh Patrick has been considered a holy mountain in Ireland since pagan times. St. Patrick is said to have fasted at its summit in 441 AD, and pilgrims have been making the climb — some barefoot — ever since. My mother grew up in Ireland, and my family has been climbing this mountain for generations. I’ve been up and down more times than I can count, and I inevitably end up sucking wind. But still, I come back.

There’s something especially meaningful about returning to a place that tests you. The mountain doesn’t change. It is the same jagged, green-gray rocks underfoot, the same steep pitch in the final few hundred yards, the same wind that comes off Clew Bay and cuts straight through you. What changes is you — the distance you’ve traveled and the person you’ve become since the last time you climbed, step by step, toward the summit.

My chest was tight, my breathing labored. I questioned, as I always do, why I was making the climb. Up ahead, my husband paused to let me catch up. My teenage daughter and niece had bounded up the trail and were already out of sight.

The climbs before this one.

I remember my first ascent, when I was about 12, feeling dizzy and too afraid to look down as I scrambled up the notoriously steep section near the top. It was the first real physical challenge I had attempted, and I wasn’t sure I would make it. At the peak, the view was spectacular — the brilliant blue waters of the bay stretched out below. I felt as if I had reached the top of the world.

Twenty years later, when my husband and I were dating, I brought him to the mountain. I wanted him to understand something about me that I couldn’t quite put into words — where my mother came from and why it mattered. He made it to the top ahead of me and was waiting when I arrived, slightly out of breath, grinning. He understood.

And now, fifteen years into our marriage, we were climbing again — this time with our teenage daughter.

He and I talked as we climbed, the way you can only talk when you’re moving. He stayed just ahead, pausing often, never rushing me. At one point, he reached back and offered his hand over a difficult stretch of rock, and I took it, and we didn’t say anything.

At the summit.

Heavy clouds hung over the mountain. As we reached the summit, we entered a mist so wet and thick it felt like walking into a rainstorm that had somehow been suspended in time — the air itself seemed to be holding its breath.

And then, my daughter appeared. She was perched on a rock near the small white chapel at the summit, her cheeks flushed, her hair wild from the wind. She looked entirely at home.

“There you are, Mom! What took you so long?”

She was happy and strong — much stronger than I was at her age, and stronger than I was now. I had carried so many worries up the mountain: whether she was ready, whether she would be afraid, whether this place would mean to her what it had always meant to me.

I looked at her, then at my husband, then out at the bay and islands below us, slowly emerging as the mist shifted and broke. The same view. The same mountain. People I love, standing here now, who would be different on the next climb.

Colleen Mastony lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, their daughter, and their two small dogs, Dorothy and Oz. This week, she and her mother leave for Ireland. They haven’t finalized their itinerary — but they will be climbing Croagh Patrick.