The Road More Traveled

How I love Robert Frost’s poem The Road Not Taken, where at the last, the poet chooses the road ‘less traveled’, making all the difference.

That image of standing at forked crossroads and choosing with deliberation the path of travel, knowing the direction taken inevitably leads away from the other choice, the other road, is so compelling.

But I am a woman of the road most traveled, not least.

Thus do I stand in family, in work, in life, on a road of tradition and connection, a road of the known, for many have been there before me and reported back.

Some days I decry my own lack of the adventurous spirit.

Yesterday was not one of those days.

I drove the 10 miles or so from the village of McDowell where I live to the ‘town’ of Monterey (population 158, give or take).

It is a road taken by we living in McDowell sometimes daily.

And I know it well.

I know where to slow down to avoid the police watching for speeders (although I sometimes forget).

I know where to watch for deer (although they sometimes surprise).

I know how long it takes me to get from the beginning to the end of the journey, almost to the second, adjusted for log trucks from elsewhere who simply will not get out of the way.

But what stayed with me yesterday is that because I travel this road so often, I know where to look for beauty along a winding road already filled with nature’s wonder.

Look right on the straight stretch out of McDowell for the llama guarding Cindy & Jeff’s sheep from the cyotes, doing a quick check just before to see if Pearl and Benny and Sarah and Luke are safe at home.

Look left around this curve into the small break in undergrowth to see the clearing beyond.

Look right again checking – Patsy and Sonny are home . . . what progress the Hiltons have made to their horse training arena, emerging slowly from the woods, one stroke of the saw at a time.

Look right just there to catch the tiny waterfall of fresh streamwater grown large in fall and frozen with dappled runs of water underneath in winter.

Look straight ahead to catch the yellow leaves sauntering to earth on the breeze like old friends greeting my passing through.

Slow down around the hairpin curve to see if any eagles have come back to the pond.

View atop Jack Mountain

Look right again atop Jack Mountain to catch the vista of mountains and valleys laid out in all their glory and cast an eye downward to catch Monterey at her best, nestled in the valley below.

Look left, always left, to catch the fall wildflowers emerging stubbornly from the rock face out of which the road is carved.

While something in me fancies the idea of the road less traveled, I live on the road more traveled and I am the richer for it.

Transforming Boundaries

Human-created boundaries have a very different meaning to the divine I Am.

We humans work so hard to live as boundary people.  Boundaries just seem so necessary to us . . . good fences make good neighbors, we say, quoting Robert Frost . . . wrongly . . . for Frost hated the very idea of walls and fences . . .

SOMETHING there is that doesn't love a wall, That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it, And spills the upper boulders in the sun; And makes gaps even two can pass abreast. . . No one has seen them made or heard them made, But at spring mending-time we find them there. I let my neighbor know beyond the hill; And on a day we meet to walk the line And set the wall between us once again. We keep the wall between us as we go. . . Oh, just another kind of outdoor game, One on a side. It comes to little more: He is all pine and I am apple-orchard. My apple trees will never get across And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors." Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder If I could put a notion in his head: "Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it Where there are cows? But here there are no cows. Before I built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down!. . . Mending Wall by Robert Frost

Robert Frost would tear down the walls . . . but Jesus . . . oh wonderful, beautiful, playful Jesus . . . Jesus would walk on them . . . he would straddle that middle space that stands in between us all . . . like Mary Lou Retton in her best balance beam form . . . like a child running along the wall . . .

Jesus doesn’t ignore the walls
He doesn’t tear down the walls
He doesn’t honor the walls
And He doesn’t go around the walls

He simply jumps up on them. . . runs along them . . . laughs and calls over them  and in the jumping and running and laughing and calling, the walls are changed . . . still brick on brick, rock on rock, walls are now . . .

The sailing ship of a small boy imagining adventures at sea . . .
The empty canvas of the urban artist . . .
The tightrope of a girl with gymnast desires in her veins . . .
A place for neighbors and friends to rest their elbows while they pass the time enjoying each other’s company . . .
A place for the ivy to grow stronger in the sun’s heat baked into the bricks . .

It is the blessing not of the doctor’s cure, but of the divine’s sharing . . .