Not long after the front lines of Syria’s civil war vanished, Areej Miro, an artisan from Damascus, set out with her hiking group for a sixth-century monastery built into the mountains of central Syria.
Under a cloudless blue sky and searing sun this past spring, Ms. Miro, 24, and her fellow hikers trekked across a rugged desert landscape — the bright red of their T-shirts providing a stark contrast against the beige dirt around them. They were headed to the ancient monastery of Deir Mar Musa, about 50 miles north of Damascus.
Ms. Miro had come of age during Syria’s nearly 14-year civil war, which ended a year ago when rebels overthrew the dictator Bashar al-Assad. The war had carved the country into different zones of control that made it impossible to travel freely.
By the time the conflict ended, Ms. Miro said she had visited only three of Syria’s 14 provinces. But as she hiked toward the monastery, she was full of hope.
“Now,” she said, “I’m intending to visit every province.”
The optimism — though guarded — of Ms. Miro and her group, called “Me the Syrian,” is a signal of how the country is transforming.
Parts of Syria remain off limits because of ethnic or sectarian tensions or Israeli attacks and seizure of territory. But many other areas have opened to travelers.
“Before the war, the map was open,” said Khaled Nwilati, 55, who founded the adventure group in the late 1980s. “We are reopening a new map.”
The group came together informally as he and some friends started gathering for outdoor activities with the idea that they should explore new places in their own country to foster a feeling of belonging, he said.
“We plan based on the seasons and the political climate,” he said in the group’s Damascus office, full of camping, hiking and climbing gear.
Along one wall hung the remnants of war that they have found over the past year: bullet casings, an ammunition box and pieces of mortar shells.
Once the war began in 2011, exploring Syria freely became nearly impossible.
On one trip in 2013, the group’s bus was shot at. Two years later, during a hike in a nature reserve in central Hama Province, two of its members were abducted and held for a month before a ransom was paid to free them.
For Ms. Miro, a craftswoman who specializes in a Middle Eastern style of painting called Ajami, seeing her own country before she ventures into the rest of the world is part of the attraction.
“I need to know Syria,” she said, as she and about two dozen other hikers trekked up a slope in May. “I’m imagining traveling and meeting people abroad, and them asking me about places in Syria that I don’t know.”
They were all dressed in bright red shirts inscribed with the hiking group’s name.
At the front of the group, Nour al-Nakkar, 23, a jewelry designer, walked with Syria’s new flag — introduced after the overthrow of Mr. al-Assad — tied to a tree branch.
“It’s a reminder that we belong to a homeland,” she said, wearing pink sunglasses that matched her blush and lipstick.
Dangers from the war remain front of mind. As they hiked, some group members morbidly joked about stepping on a land mine — a ubiquitous threat across Syria.
“You don’t know what’s going to come ahead of us,” said Mr. Nwilati, his long black hair tied in a bun.
“It could be ISIS,” said Samer Akkad, 47, a tour guide and climber, referring to the terrorist group Islamic State, which still has cells in the country and last month killed two U.S. soldiers and a civilian American interpreter.
“It could be regime remnants,” Mr. Nwilati countered, a term used to describe forces loyal to the ousted Mr. al-Assad. They are suspected in a spate of attacks since the end of the civil war, according to Syrian authorities.
The hikers joked that if that happened, they would try to prove their patriotism to the former government.
“Right away, we’ll start singing the national anthem,” Mr. Akkad said with a laugh, as he began chanting the first lines of the now discarded patriotic tune.
As they walked, Ms. al-Nakkar advised the group to keep in a straight line to avoid possible dangers off the trail.
At another break, the hikers huddled against a ridge, taking shade in a landscape where there were few places to get relief from the sun.
Mr. Nwilati entertained the group with stories of past adventures, including the time years ago when the group accidentally walked into a restricted military zone.
Before the war tore Syria apart, many Syrians were not that interested in getting to know their country, besides a few popular tourist spots, he said.
He hopes that this new era will ignite a domestic curiosity.
“We can’t call ourselves Syrian if we don’t know Aleppo, if we haven’t swum in the Euphrates, if we haven’t walked along the coast,” he said. “We are living in a big house and there are rooms we have never gone into.”
Raja Abdulrahim reports on the Middle East and is based in Jerusalem.
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