THOUGHTS WHILE WALKING
THE ROBERT FROST TRAIL

Ripton, Vermont

by Gordon Klopfenstein

I started my walk in the mist and fog
And almost stumbled over a log
That had evidently paid the price
For a winter of excessive ice.

But I had walked this path before,
And will again—many times more
So I knew that from this mountain beauty
The sun would do its fog-clearing duty.

I watched carefully where I put each foot
So I wouldn’t catch it on a root
And kept my balance as best I could
With a walking stick of apple wood.

I’d walked this path before in pain
But I walked because I knew I’d gain
From profound thoughts in simple words
And from verdant plants and singing birds.

I’d walked with joints of bone and sinew—
Painful—but I walked because I knew
The feelings those thoughts and birds would bring
Would make my very soul to sing.

Today my joints are steel and plastic
And painlessly with my walking stick
I walked back to that place in time
That gave me peace and Frost his rhyme.

I saw that calf licked by its mother.
And those boy-bent birches rub each other.
I saw the path in the yellow wood
And took the ‘other’ as I knew I should.

To that place with no wires overhead,
With nothing but nature and my spirit said,
“This is the place you should have been born
That bright and crisp October morn.

This is the place you ought to stay
From modern technology far away
With only your thoughts and Robert’s calf
And a playful chipmunk to make you laugh.”

This is the place, and I thought, “What a pity
To waste life’s moments in a modern city.
Yes, this is the place I want to stay
From modern technology far away.”

But a scene from my childhood intruded there
Of a quilt-wrapped figure in a rocking chair.
An arthritic invalid, barely talking
From pain or despair. But I was walking!

Then—I pushed the button, heard the van locks click
And I lifted the hatch and placed my stick
Beside the crutches and the brace
That I’d brought along just in case.

That told me who and where I was
As the noise of technology always does
And I reluctantly admitted as I took off my sweater,
“Perhaps this place in time is better.”