The Road Less Traveled
I think that all of you that are reading this statement have identified with the road less traveled. I love the imagery conjured by Robert Frost’s poem where he comments on us taking the road less traveled. I know I have written about this myself from time to time and I always come back to it.
Either metaphorically or literally, the road less traveled usually presents us with many opportunities to enrich our lives. I have blogged about it a few times and one of these is the “Art of getting lost”.
I consider it a “truism” to say, “By not following the pack and instead, blazing our own trails, we constantly have experiences that our counterparts don’t”.
I find that during the fall season, I seldom take the “published scenic routes” BUT… this does not mean I don’t take Iconic Routes like the Kancamagus, mostly because you are looking for reports on what the “Kanc” is looking like.
If I’m out for me, I will instead pick a destination on the map that sounds really neat like “Cooper’s Corner”. I don’t know what’s there to photograph or why it’s named that but when I get there I hope to answer these questions and find out… One mystery down and millions to go!
The second image is a good representation of this type of exploring in that I knew the pond was there but didn’t think about it too often. It’s a few towns away and not on my normal drives. I was out exploring for local fall foliage and I decided to finally explore the Saugus Ironworks (a National Historic Site in the NPS). by clicking this you can see some of my Saugus Ironworks images.
Upon leaving the National Park, I took a residential road that took me over to the Birch pond in Lynn Massachusetts. I could see the blue blob on my GPS but I didn’t know more than that. It was only a few minutes away and the toughest part was finding someplace to park.
Once I crossed the very busy Walnut Street (this was a weekday) and commuter traffic was whizzing by. Once I was safely on the edge of the pond the sun made a half-hearted attempt to come out and brighten the scene. Here is a Google map to the Birch Pond.
There is a path that goes around the pond and you can explore all sorts of little alcoves around the pond. But the thing that comes to my mind is all the people zooming by on their way to or from work. Do any of them see this beauty that is just a few feet from their cars?
It’s true they would have to get out of their cars and there is no parking but this path not taken is so close and yet…
Jeff Foliage Folger
Autumn is a state of mind more than a time of year – Jeff Foliage
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Lovely story and picture of Birch Pond, thank you.
thanks for the pics and the postings. I am looking forward to 2020 foliage season.