Walking through the forest at Earth Sanctuary on Whidby Island, Washington.
This morning, I was in Marcia Meier’s group Writing Through the Apocalypse and she prompted us to write about something we wish we had known earlier:
I wish I had known earlier that there was no “right” journey, there is merely a journey.
For years, I stressed over being on the “right” journey. Was I making the right decision to take that job? Was I making the wrong decision to date that guy?
It took me until my 50s to learn that Robert Frost poem’s The Road Not Taken that I had memorized as a child simply was not true.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.
Mr. Frost, there are many roads. Where do you get off telling me that there are only two? And, what the heck is a yellow wood anyway? I can think of all kinds of things about yellow wood but I won’t go there because I have to stay on the “right” path.
And, sorry I could not travel both.
You don’t have to be sorry. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that it’s better to be grateful for the road you’re on? And, why would you be sorry when you can back up on the trail and take the other one, and the other one . . . and the other one, if necessary.
And, looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth.
Well, if you have bear spray and your mountain lion safety on, you can go as far as you want down a path whether or not you can see ahead on it or not. Just ask Bill Bryson, author of A Walk In the Woods. Do you think he could see all of the way down the Appalachian Trail?
Then, took the other, as just as fair.
Well, there are fair people and fair judges and fairs where the “fair”ess wheels touch the sky, but a fair path? Hmmm, I have to think about that. So you took that path and are justifying it by saying that it was grassy and wanted wear. So you’re into grass. I get it. A lot of people are.
Oh, I kept the first for another day.
Of course you did. And, you probably kept another trail, and another, and another for another day, including a beach walk.
I doubted if I should ever come back.
Well, then, why the heck did you keep it in the first place if you never wanted to come back?
Two roads diverged in the woods, and I . . .
Well, Mr. Frost, let me tell you what it took me 50 years to learn. There are never only two roads. There are always more. “Two roads” is a duality that is not real. There are many ways that you can get to the same endpoint. I wish I had never memorized your The Road Not Taken because it has caused me a lot of grief.
I took the one less traveled by and that had made all of the difference.
Okay, okay, poet extraordinaire. Let me tell you, I have taken many roads that have been less traveled by, like the one out in Death Valley that had me bumping along dirt roads wondering whether or not I was going to make it out alive until I hit Nipton, a ghost town that’s not really a ghost town because a couple of people live there. I camped next to Burning Man sculptures and took hot showers under the stars, but that wasn’t because I took one road or the other. I could have gotten there many different ways.
But, one thing, I will agree with you upon. It did make all of the difference because I learned that taking a new road or a path anywhere will introduce you to all kinds of unexpected places, people and things.
