I’m pretty sure that the Path to Enlightenment and the Stairway to Heaven aren’t paved in silver and gold or asphalt and concrete. I’m betting they’re covered in dirt. Many of my favorite memories are connected to a dirt road. Even though I grew up during the build out of Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway dream, it was always dirt roads that stirred my soul.
One of my favorite poems from early on was Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” It’s obvious in the poem, that both roads were dirt, though they may have been covered with a few yellow leaves. Did they even have pavement in 1915? Actually they did but it hadn’t caught on yet – that was about to change.
Frost says he wrote the poem as a joke to a friend about his indecisiveness when they went walking out in nature, but it definitely resonated with a lot of folks as sort of a meditation on choice. The poem has always inspired me. “I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.” What a finale! Here’s the entire poem if you haven’t read it in while.
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 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.
Robert Frost
As I was chasing down enlightenment this morning on the High Plains, grinding the gravel under my oversize tires, it occurred to me that I could share my dirt road experiences with the Great Wide World, like Frost. Heck, who nows, perhaps one of my utterances will inspire someone someday;>) So, this is the first installment of the “Dirt Diary.” A random celebration of riding bikes on “roads less traveled.” Pictures, prose and mind meanderings from “Out There,” in the dirt.
I hope to put up a “Dirt Diary” post once a week on 3mph.org, so be sure to subscribe to get an email when the latest Dirt Diary is posted. In the mean time, here’s a poem I penned a while back about bicyling on “roads less traveled.” It’s not Frost or Shakespeare but I enjoyed creating it.
