Frost and Frost

This morning, after shuffling my kids back to school, I left the house to walk my five dogs. Stepping out the door -- I hadn't really looked out the window yet -- I was amazed to find the whole world covered in white hoarfrost. Walking through the pasture was like walking through crystal -- the naked tree limbs, the blades of dried-up grass, even the barbed wire stretching across fences -- every surface glistened with fine particles of ice, so delicate that they snowed down to the ground with the slightest disturbance. As I clumped through the snowdrifts, I could not see another human being; sure, I know my husband and his hired man were out there somewhere, feeding, and I could hear the sound of vehicles driving by on the highway . . . but for just twenty precious minutes, the world consisted of me, my dogs, and a palace of ice.

This is the life I've chosen. In my world, I can't run to Starbuck's for a coffee whenever I want, or pop over to the nearest gas station when I forget to buy milk. My Internet connection, satellite-powered, is still glitchy enough that I don't spend a lot of time online. Therefore, I don't have a Facebook or MySpace page, don't Twitter, and am only just discovering the depth and breadth of the blogging world. Who knew? There are so many elements of our cyber-powered world that I am a novice at, so many high-speed pleasures that I haven't experienced. But, my world holds an ancient beauty and calm, a connection to land and creature that can't be found online, or in a busy city.

So -- as much as this makes me sound like the corny former-English teacher that I am -- this morning's frost reminded me of Frost. Like, the guy, the poet. The one who wrote, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --/I took the one less-traveled by,/ And that has made all the difference." (from "The Road Not Taken," Robert Frost)

I thought of this poem this morning, because there were so many roads laid before me when I was twenty; many of them still there when I was thirty; but at forty, with a husband, six kids, five dogs, who-knows-how-many cats, and more horses than I probably should own . . . some of those old roads are pretty faint tracks by now. "Yet knowing how way leads on to way/ I doubted if I should ever come back." (Frost)

Regrets? Maybe a few. But not so many that I can't appreciate the other-worldly beauty of a world kissed by snow angels, the world that I was privileged enough to walk through this morning.