The Road Less Traveled

So, there are 305 million people in the USA. 12 million of those folks live in PA. I think that means that 24 out of 25 Americans live outside the Keystone State. I wonder what they all do out there without an Allegheny to discover and rediscover in every changing season? Surely folks in Iowa and Nevada do more than surf the Internet and play car-crash games on their wiis? I mean, I know there are other wild places out there, and I know that some of those places are filled with beauty and adventure, but I feel sorry for folks who don't have the Allegheny in October.

In any case, in celebration of October's arrival in the byways of the Allegheny National Forest, painting the woodlands in hews of yellow, orange, and red, here's a poem that might seem overused...until you listen to its words. And let's raise our canteens to "the road less traveled by," as Robert Frost calls it, for it does indeed make all the difference in this life.

The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
and sorry that 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 perhaps having 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 yellow wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.

~Robert Frost, 1920