Today’s blog post was churning around in my brain yesterday and I originally intended to entitle it “Fitz-n–startz” because it seems to me that since I resumed my walking regimen, the marching ventures in this month of March have mostly resulted in fits and starts, nothing regular. There has been nothing much to write about during the past few trips – no interesting encounters, a rather lackluster landscape and plodding along with salt chunks crunching under the soles of my walking shoes, whether I am walking in the street or residential sidewalks. The sky most of the time has been dreary and cloudy, the remaining snow is rather dingy and the stringy-looking grass is starved for TLC in the form of fertilizer and sunshine because it sure looks brown and blah right now. Likewise, it is hard to have a spring in your step when you are pounding the pavement, in air temps of 11 degrees like when I stepped outside this morning. Perhaps I am just getting old, but it is hard to muster much enthusiasm for a walk when the wind is stinging your face and whipping through your bulky clothes from the tip of your head to your toes. But I’ve gone out most days anyway because there is no snow to slow my steps. There will never be 100% perfect conditions to walk every single day, and I guess I should reconcile myself to that fact if I want to consider myself an avid walker and perhaps strive to set a walking mileage goal again later this year. Thus, I really must get going in earnest before yard work rears its ugly head and puts a kibosh on the daily walk, plus soon I will be contending with the inevitable April showers. Now, I’ve never been that much of a free spirit that I’d be drawn outside to walk in the rain, let alone dance in it as that expression goes. Perhaps I am jaded by way too many years of commuting to work by public transportation and incurring the wrath of Mother Nature, i.e. slogging through a driving rain, or standing tapping my foot waiting on the bus in windy, drizzly conditions when an umbrella does nothing but turn inside out or try to go airborne. Thus, I am less inclined to venture out in inclement weather just to walk. Today is the birthday of poet Robert Frost who was born 140 years ago on this date. I put a little twist on the title of his famous poem below on my blog post today. With potential freezing rain predicted in the overnight, perhaps tomorrow morning the road for me will be a trip to the basement to pedal on the exercise bike and think of warmer, more-inviting days ahead. Perhaps another 100 days tacked onto today will yield such an inviting road less travelled as this girl above has chosen … peace, solitude and beauty all around. In the meantime, a girl can hope and dream can’t she?

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The Road Not Taken –by Robert Frost
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.

[Image by photographer Marcino at Pixabay]