@noisesmith I ended up writing with let,

let [a results
     a (if ... (point-query a) a
     a ...]

will take a look into trampoline, though

I'm trying to convert a bunch of imperative, ref-set code to a more purely functional one

@mping that makes sense - check out cond-> as well - it is designed for exactly your use case of a series of conditional transforms of some input

I thought trampoline at first because I thought your reason for using a ref was that complex, it looks like it actually isn't