Byways I
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…Two
roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has m
Whether
Robert Frost, in his poem The
Road Not Taken, was in earnest or perhaps being cynical,
this writer always prefers to take the way less traveled, whenever
possible. (Our lives seldom permit us to travel on byways exclusively,
but I believe that it’s a lot more doable, and desirable, than we
often realize.)
Even
if his choice might have made a difference, Frost would not have gone far
wrong
no matter which way he chose, in my opinion, as both, being located in
a wood, qualified as a byway, and thereby would have encouraged a
slower, more reflective and altogether more enjoyable experience than
if had he headed out of the wood and onto a busy highway.
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Country
Road, Donington on Bain 20 August 2009 |
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Taking
a byway is, figuratively as well as literally, as much a matter of time
as it is of distance. But slower is not always less productive and
often it’s more enjoyable. Andre Moreau expressed this sentiment well
in the 1952 movie, Scaramouche: Happy is the rascal, traveling
life’s byways, to whom the gods say, here is an easy switch. You may
have lost Diana on the highway, but look, there is Aphrodite in a
ditch. Put
another, pleasantly persuasive way by Flora Thompson, in A
Country Calendar: I never, if I can avoid it, set
foot upon the highway, but, as soon as my work is done, drop over the
orchard wall, cross my neighbour’s valley farm, climb the opposite
hill, and there, upon the upland heath, I have all the solitude heart
could desire. Come,
then, with me over my “orchard wall” and set foot, for a quiet
moment, upon some of the byways of the world which I have found so
refreshing through the years…
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