The Road Not Taken
I dedicate this post to my niece Rachel, intrepid traveler and author of “Tripping with Rachel,” a regular column in Narragansett Patch, “a community-specific news and information platform dedicated to providing comprehensive and trusted local coverage for individual towns and communities” in the USA. Her straightforward style and wonderful photography make me very proud of her. But just who is following in whose footsteps?
Brown leaves crunch under my feet as blustery winds bluster about my ears. My neck is submitted to a cold blast as my hat flies off, revealing my hair to the much-missed sunshine of the day. Vitamin D floods my face with happy chemicals.
As we follow our usual route through the woods, something inside us urges us to turn the other way, to follow a path down which we had never been before. We leave the comfort of our habits and begin discovering a wonderful world of hitherto unseen trees, lakes and scenery. We pass not a single fellow walker on our journey, yet we take newfound comfort in our isolation, concentrating on ourselves and on which road we would take next.
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
