The Trail Less Traveled

Thanksgiving is a time for family and friends to gather and reflect on things they are thankful for. Included on my grateful for list this year is the opportunity to write this column for The Coloradoan. In a photo shopped world where information is routinely manufactured to advance someone’s agenda, I choose to share stories about real life and let the chips fall where they may. The response to this column has been overwhelmingly positive which has inspired me to continue to write.

When a recording artist attains a certain amount of success, they usually put out a greatest hits album. Looking back on the last 6 months of writing, certain columns of mine do stand out. The very first one back in May incorporated the theme of the most interesting man in the world. There were also stories about lightning, trees falling, me falling, bear attacks, elk attacks, famous friends, and of course, hiking.

My instructional columns in the beginning soon morphed into stories of past and present adventures. Nobody seemed to mind, so each week, 600 words or so were carefully crafted together to communicate what I had to say. In an Andy Rooney sort of way, I noticed things on and off the trail. For example, did you ever notice how people enjoy reading about someone else’s mistakes when and if they live to tell about them?

On the other hand, my wife thinks I have an odd fascination with bear attacks. At the same time, she can’t understand how I am unable to watch medical shows on TV because of all the gory stuff they show. From my perspective, the natural world order is one thing and the human being world order is quite another. So as we move from the end of the hiking season into the beginning of the winter season, I will try to keep entertaining my audience with observations from the outdoors.

In nature, winter tends to cull the herd of the weak and the sick. For humans, winter sometimes is a dark and cold time. A Kung Fu master once said,( through my stories this winter, I will try and) “Be like the sun, and what is within you will warm the earth.” I hope my writing helps you to enjoy the day and adds something to your Sunday morning.

I plan on skiing and snow shoeing this winter and will incorporate those topics into the column. I will sign off today with a poem either about rugged individualism or a hiking friend’s indecision. Either way, it is one of my step daughter Mallory’s favorites:

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

Happy Thanksgiving.