*authors note….I sometimes struggle when choosing a title…it wouldn’t seem that hard, in fact you would think that most stories write their own title’s and sometimes that happens, but occasionally I sit here and stare at the screen trying to think of the perfect title that will grab a readers attention and draw them in. For instance, this story was going to be called… A Walk in the Woods….but I realized that I had already used that title on a previous blog post. About 2 years ago I wrote a story of my son and I hiking through the woods, he was 16 at the time and we discussed those issues that are important to a teenager. It’s perhaps my favorite story, so if you haven’t read it, please check it out after reading this one. Sometimes the best titles are the simple ones and there’s nothing more simple than a 1 word title, and that’s how this story got this title*
I’ve been doing more hiking this winter. I’ve found it to be both enjoyable and a great way to get outside at a time of year when it can be a struggle to find a reason to be outside. You may think that hiking in the woods in the winter is less than ideal, but I would disagree. Sure the ground is frozen and can be snowy and icy and in places it can be slippery, but it’s also a symphony for the senses. The snow crunching beneath your boots, the cold, raw air filling your lungs, your breath visible as you exhale after climbing a hill. The occasional sounds of birds or other woodland creatures scurrying about searching for food in the dwindling daylight hours.
Yes, winter is perhaps the second best time of year for hiking in the woods. I think we can all agree that fall is the best with the leaves changing colors and the heat of the summer gone. Spring is actually the worst, the woods are muddy and wet from the spring rains and the melting of the earth. There’s about a 3 week period between spring and summer that’s ideal for a hike through the woods, but then the heat of the summer means the woods will quickly become overgrown with brush and filled with bugs, mosquitos and tics, making a trip to the woods more annoyance than pleasure.
On a recent Saturday morning, I was told that “someone” had left the door to the basement open and a draft was coming up the stairs chilling the whole house, and then “someone” had put a dark t-shirt into the wrong laundry hamper and do you even know what would happen to all the whites if a dark t-shirt was washed with them.
Now, I’m no expert on the chemical properties of t-shirt dye and how it mixes and runs with the hot water and soap of laundry detergent, but I did realize it was time to go for a hike….a long hike.
I am fortunate enough to live about 15 minutes from a county park that has miles of hiking trails. In a normal winter with plentiful snow fall, there’s a wonderful sledding hill that’s packed on the weekends with parents and kids careening down the hill, the sounds of laughter and yelling filling the air. But this winter there has been a surprising lack of snow which meant a bare sledding hill and a virtually empty park, a bonus for me as I prefer to have the trails to myself, my thoughts filling my head and ideas coming and going…now don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of lots of people outside exercising and enjoying nature and the world about them, I just prefer if we’re not on the same trail at the same time to avoid that awkward moment when you realize your going at a different pace and you have to decide whether to speed up to pass them or slow down a little. I invariably slow down a little, but then I realize it would just be better to pass them and I speed up to get around them as quick as possible.
The first 15 minutes of my hike I followed the trail along the river. The above average temperatures meant that the river was not frozen and it ran high and fast. I stopped for a few minutes to watch it and I would like to tell you that during those couple of minutes I thought about how winters seemed much different than when I was a kid, it seemed like we always had lots of snow for sledding and skiing. I would like to tell you how I was thinking about global warming and how it’s affecting our world around us, how the ice caps and glaciers are melting resulting in a changing habitat for polar bears and penguins, how even a slight rise in the temperatures can cause catastrophic effects on nature.
What I was actually thinking about was when I was a kid, I would throw a stick into a river and then run alongside the bank following it downstream. I would imagine a frog or tadpole would climb aboard the stick and ride on it like it was his boat. I would chase after the stick until I could no longer keep up with it and the river took it out of sight. I would stand there wondering what had become of the stick and wondering how far it would go downstream.
The river made a gentle turn and went out of sight as the path went the other way. I trudged along stepping carefully as the path become more slippery with patches of snow and ice. The path was going more into the woods and the trees lining it meant that the sun rarely reached this area. The sound of the rushing river had been replaced by the sound of silence, only my boots crunching on the ground across the snow and ice.
A few minutes later, coming in the opposite direction, I encountered the first other people I had seen in the park. I recognized them, not that I knew them, but I knew who they were. There is a monastery in our county and the 4 men approaching me were monks. The long black robes and long beards gave them away. I’ve been to their monastery with deliveries, it’s a beautiful, large piece of land out in the country. It’s surrounded by woods and has a large pond, it’s so large that the word pond doesn’t do it justice, it’s actually more like an in-land lake. I’m not quite sure how many monks are there or what they do….perhaps they make candles and wine and meditate all day.
These monks were not on a vow of silence as they approached me. They all seemed to be talking excitedly and one was even waving his hands wildly. As I got closer to them I wondered if I would hear a deep philosophical conversation about religion or mans place in the universe, so I was a little disappointed as we passed each other that I heard the words “Tik-Tok” being spoken and something about the latest dance one of them had seen. Hmmm, I wondered, have the monks given up the wine and candle making and they spend their days making “Tik-Tok” videos hoping they go viral? Could this be a new phenomenon, the “Tik-Toking” monks of Michigan? Perhaps these monks weren’t as orthodox as I had thought, perhaps they had fully embraced social media and were “Instagramming” their days and “tweeting” updates from the monastery, perhaps they even had “followers” who checked in every day.
I was still thinking about the social media monks when I came upon a split in the trail. I stood there, the Robert Frost poem about the different paths we travel popped into my head.
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;
The one path went straight and was much like the trail I was on, flat with some snow covering it. The other path went up a hill and was covered in snow and ice. Usually I like a good climb and a challenge.
I stood there for a while and pondered my next move, actually I stood there far longer than I should have and I realized I was making this far more difficult than it needed to be, it was just choosing between 2 paths on a hike in the woods on a cold January day. The path before me, the flat one, was well traveled as evidence from the numerous footprints in the snow. The path leading to the hill showed hardly any footprints, and the hill was icy so it was hard to tell if anyone had climbed it recently. I looked around, there was no one else near me, no one else watching, no one to prod me one way or the other.
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,
I took the flat path straight in front of me. I didn’t want to risk slipping and sliding on the hill and perhaps falling or turning an ankle….and I instantly regretted it. I silently cursed myself….why did I take this “safe path?”
This path was well traveled but had no adventure to it, the other path went up a hill and who knows what was at the top, there could have been many more paths and adventures at the top of that hill, and the path I was on, the safe path, the path well traveled by many others was leading me nowhere. I thought about turning around and going back and charging up that hill slippery conditions be damned, but honestly I hate turning around, I hate going back, I hate the regrets. Maybe it’s simply I hate admitting I should have done the other thing…I had made a poor decision and it bothered me.
But as so often happens when hiking in the woods or in life, another opportunity soon presented itself with another fork in the trail, and once again I was standing before a path leading to a hill or I could continue on the path I was on.
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
Well, I think you know where this is headed, I turned toward the path leading to the hill. The hill was covered in snow and ice, and I slipped more than once and almost fell. I wondered if I actually did fall, would I slide all the way back down the hill ?
I reached the top a short time later and looked about. From my vantage point I could see most of the park, the river off in the distance, the trails I had been on and the ones still to be discovered. They would have to wait for another day as the January light was quickly fading.
I hope I don’t disappoint you, because if you’ve read this far, you’re probably thinking that I have some great wisdom to tell you about paths in the woods and life’s journey….but I don’t. I will tell you this….getting up that hill wasn’t half as difficult as getting down that damned thing, and perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned from that…but I’ll let you decide for yourself.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
*authors note…..yes, TWO authors notes on ONE blog….while researching the poem by Frost, I came across an interesting story written by his biographer and since I found it on the internet, it must be true. It seems that Frost sent a rough draft of this poem to a literary friend/critic in England. Evidently they used to go walking in the woods when they were younger and this friend would always lament that they should have taken a different path. So Frost wrote this poem as a way to poke fun of his friend. His friend, not at all seeing himself in the poem but seeing the deeper meaning in the words, wrote back to Frost saying something like “hey, I think you’ve got something here.” They proceeded to exchange a couple of more letters each trying to get their point across, and eventually the friend must have convinced Frost of the worthiness of his work….and we are all the beneficiary’s of it. *
Journey well, friends….
John
John's Blog 