Climb It!!!
This was always the philosophy of all the adventurers and authors I have read and seen since I was a child. I have always wished I was that person. I always wanted to be one who could honestly quote Robert Frost’s famous poem…
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.
Well, now I can! Ever since we have been here we have looked off into the distance and saw this peak. This amazing pointed peak in the vast horizon of rolling hills. Rusty and I wondered many times what it must be, on that peak. A monastery? A castle? I don’t know, do you? Turns out it is neither, and it is not simply a peak among foothills. It was an observation tower atop a cold volcano!
We took the road less traveled today, we climbed a volcano. WOW! What a feeling. I felt as if this place were made to show us simple humans just how much we need to respect nature in all of her glory. I saw the most beautiful trees afire with fall colors, moss oozing from crevices in rocks, fields of fluorescent yellow flowers, and rocks that had been spewed from beneath the volcano thousands of years ago.
Now that I have finally taken the road less traveled by… I think I’ll do it more often. We already have plans to buy serious hiking shoes and walking sticks. What a wonderful family weekend activity.