The long way home

It's on days like this that I'm reminded why being outside, really outside - away from houses and traffic, sirens and trains, the hustle and bustle of the city - is good for my soul. I took the long way home tonight. While long drives often help me clear my head, tonight's drive happened on winding roads, down through the valley, through the national park, with dusk approaching, past a couple of deer forging for dinner, windows down, sunroof open, music on, fresh spring air moving over my face.

While I grew up in open space, I'm now more of a city dweller. I work in downtown Cleveland and live not even six miles from the office. I'm spoiled by the convenience of being able to get up, shower, get ready and be at my desk in 60 minutes. But between home and work, I rarely seem to get "out." While I appreciate living on a pretty quiet street, the breezes off the lake and the trees that populate my neighborhood, at night the stars are shut out by street lights. I can hear the train running by on the tracks that are in walking distance from my house and planes on their way to land at Cleveland-Hopkins.

So when city living gets to me, I'm fortunate that I can escape to my parents' home. They live on a Boy Scout camp in Lisbon, Ohio. At their house, you can lie in bed at night and hear the bullfrogs and crickets competing in the darkness. There are no barriers - not even one city light - between me sitting on swing in the backyard and the stars in the sky.

I often get caught up in my job and my daily life and the stress that seems to often infuse it. I forget that when things feel out of control and unmanageable, just some time walking in the woods with the path in front of me lit by nothing by moonlight, sitting on the dock listening to the gentle waves hit the edge of the lake, makes me feel better, relaxed, more centered.

With this in mind, I looked up one of the poems that I've always loved...

The road less 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