The Road Less Traveled

Well, it’s been almost a year-and-a-half since I wrote in my blog - I keep meaning to “get caught up”, but of course that never seems to actually happen. I will have to find a way to back-date all the draft posts I have from New Zealand.

I can’t believe that the last time I wrote I was still in New Zealand! So, what new roads have there been for me/us since then?

(Now, this blog is about my “Roads Less Traveled”, meaning the meanderings and branches in my road through life. Not necessarily roads less travelled in the real world - for that, go read something like Dervla Murphy’s “Full Tilt: Ireland to India With a Bicycle” or “Where the Indus is Young: A Winter in Baltistan”. Crazy Irishwoman!)

We came back from our year with the intent of moving closer to Cindy’s family, and then staying put and relaxing for a bit. Not doing any travel, working in the yard… And what do we end up with? Possibly one of the busiest travel years! But that’s fodder for a future post! (Hopefully not a year-and-a-half from now!)

So, why “The Road Less Traveled”? It comes from my favroite poem, The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost. It is meant to serve both as a theme as I write about what I’m doing now and what I’ve done in the past, but also as a constant reminder to myself to make time for what’s important, working towards my goals, trying new things. I certainly don’t lead a radical life, but want to remember that I have done some interesting things in the past, and want to continue doing them in the future.

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.