camwyn | Robert Frost, you are a DEAD MAN.

The Road Less Traveled, My Ass

Two roads diverged at the edge of the wood;
one built of asphalt, for the cars, and one
For feet and bicycle and skiiers' ways.
And since I knew the asphalt would not do
To reach my goal in time enough, I thought,
"Perhaps the trail before me will suffice."
And so I took it. Oh, that trail was fair!
Wide enough to ski on, paved with chips-
cedar or some other wood, who knows?
Maintained and cared for, anyway. It ran beneath
The limbs of spruces skinnier than I
That nonetheless had grown there since before
The Day of Statehood. Birches, too, there were,
And plants of kinds I'd never seen before.
Red berries, mushrooms, ferny dusts of green,
And tracks of hooves and paws alike I found.
I walked for quite some time, and found a sign
That gave the trail's name, Baseline Winter. Well,
I didn't know that, but it seemed all right.
So I kept going, thinking I would turn
And head north to the LARS when it came time.
And then I found the crossroads.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood," said Frost.
Well, here before me roads there numbered FOUR.

I took the road that seemed the best to me.
Though skinny, slender, tiny, it did run
In the direction that I had to go.
I thought perhaps it was a trail for bikes
(for certainly no skiier could have made
their way along a tiny path like that)
And found electric cable by its side.
Where there is cable, there are human hands-
or were, or will be. Either way it is
That man or woman had a part in it.
Because of that I saw the whole trail through.
I found where reindeer moss grows wild,
sprawled alike on soil and fallen log.
Berries, bushes, grasses, twitting birds,
Mushrooms - four kinds! (Not that I know the things.)
Plants I could never name, trees so small
That even Charlie Brown would be hard put
To take them home with him. But then,
Ah, then I found the water. Damn it all,
This trail, if trail it was, had nowt to do
With men. Oh, yes, there was the wire,
But campus trails are cared for. This was not.
The water, brown and tannic, pooled and swirled
In all the lowest places on the trail.
The mud alone was bad enough! It tried
To pull the boots from both my feet as much
As any quicksand might. Of course I kept
My head about me and walked along my way,
But mud gives way to water when it's low.
Four times the water came up to my knees.
I thought much then of Moose, of how he gangles,
And how the spindly legs he has are fine-
more so by far than stomping boots in mud.
I thought as well of Raven, though that one
Was nowhere to be seen. It is his land, you know.
I muttered, but kept going. When I found
A dry spot, the water got poured out,
And I squelched on my way. At last the trail
Gave way to lines of power and to wood,
Not the living stuff. Oh, no. This wood
Had gone all gray with time. And it had signs!
Well, one sign, anyway. NO TRESPASSING,
YOU WILL BE PROSECUTED - UAF
DEPARTMENT OF ATHLETICS PROPERTY.
But here were tire tracks too. I followed them.
I found the road and walked along its side,
And asphalt led me in the very end.

The road, it seemed, had won. But then again,
I had to go back yet. And at the LARS
A British student told me of the ways
That run through woods and under trees, without
The water and the mud that plagued me so.
He drew a map. It wasn't much to see,
But it had all the spots I had to know.
'Not this trail - that one goes to Ester Dome,
And you don't want to run that marathon.
Not this trail - that will take you to a fence.
Take this, that runs by power lines, and then-
If you like this trail here goes along
To Smith Lake. Sometimes there are moose.
When you are done go here. It goes uphill.
And at the end you'll see a satellite dish,
Taller than any tree in sight. That's where
You'll find the campus. There are roads from there.'
These were his words, the only things that made
The map at all of use. And since no one
Besides me had the words, it is my map,
And that was all I needed, in the end.

'The road less traveled'. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha.
Frost, that was no road, it was a path for moose.
I did not take the road less traveled, no;
I went where there had been no road at all,
And in the end I named that road my own.
I have come back. The poet never did.
Or if he did he never said. His problem.
Never mine. I've made my road. Now I,
I have before me a full mug of chai,
And for my part, that makes the difference.

LARS - the Large Animal Research Station of the University of Alaska. they raise musk-ox and caribou and reindeer there.
UAF - University of Alaska, Fairbanks campus.