Homer Noble Farm - Ripton, VT

Place: Homer Noble Farm - Ripton, VT

Weather: Rain showers, 61/75F

Route: From Concord, MA 175 miles NNW on US-3 N, I-89 N, VT-100 N.

Significance: I'm afraid I've gone on a bit of a literary tangent here in New England. Homer Noble Farm is where the poet Robert Frost spent his summers and falls from 1921 to 1962 - teaching at the Broad Loaf School of English at Middlebury College.  Frost is probably the most famous American poet of the 20th century. He won four Pulitzer prizes for his poems.  His most famous poem is "The Road Not 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.

I had always thought of this poem as advice from an old man given to a young person to boldly tread where few people had tread before.  But, after reading some interpretations online I realized I was wrong. If you look at the last stanza the most famous part is him predicting that he will say in the future (he wrote it when he was in his in his early 40's) "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."  And earlier in the poem he states that both paths "had worn them really about the same."  So, the poem is really about our ability to congratulate ourselves about our choices, rather than anything having to do with how we should make those choices.

Here is a 2015 essay by David Orr in Paris Review setting down the case that Road Less Traveled is "The Most Misread Poem in America."