The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Robert Frost speaks to me. When I was a little girl of 8, I was sure the poem; The Road Not Taken, was written for me. It was my youthful self discovering something beyond me and how my choices mattered in life and I remember clearly wondering if it mattered which way I took home from, because of course, I walked miles to and from school at age eight. 

I have pretty consistently chosen the roads less traveled throughout my life.  And I often consider life in metaphors of nature. I  walk each day on paths, roads, and  trails, I hike, traverse and climb, sometimes pushing, sometimes meandering and sometimes reflective. It’s a journey and it’s a commitment just to show up. I make choices and sometimes not great ones. I get stressed and tired and don’t  sleep well and then feel I don’t have time for a walk or time with a friend and then I’m really off my path and I have to remember and step back on. And that makes all the difference.

The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost 

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 kept 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 traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.