The One Less Traveled By

Robert Frost's famous poem, decision-making, and the narrow roads of Jesus and Knox County.

Somewhere on the Mount Pharaoh Trail in the Adirondack Mountains, circa August 2007.

The roads near my house in northeast Knox County are treacherous to drive on late at night, especially in winter when the asphalt is slick from the near-constant drizzle. Where I live, sandwiched between civilization and the boondocks, there are no streetlights, and the lane markers are just wide enough to accommodate Perla and the super-sized gas guzzlers so typical around these parts. Their LED lights almost always blind me through the windshield and, as they blow by me, they miss my driver side mirror by the length of a Mountain Dew bottle and a Newport cigarette. The experience of driving home after dark can be so terrifying that I wouldn’t be surprised if whoever wrote the lyrics for Carrie Underwood’s “Jesus, Take the Wheel” had lived off Brown Gap Road.

On the first page of the church bulletin at Redeemer Presbyterian every Sunday, our pastor includes reflections from literature, film, or music. Years ago, he rarely got through preaching without mentioning Hamilton or a lyric from The Avett Brothers. Recently, he used a quote from Robert Frost’s most famous poem, “The Road Not Taken,” which then served as the opening anecdote to his sermon.

I love that poem. During our second babymoon in Chattanooga in 2021, Haley and I walked the wooden bridge to a bookstore. There, I bought Little Poet Robert Frost: Two Roads, a children’s version of the poem, which I hope will pave the way that leads my children to good literature they won’t be old enough to read for another decade.

The final stanza is the most famous. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference.” The lines appear in graduation speeches and product commercials as far as New Zealand. They’re popular because they refer to the decision we make upon waking up each morning: to keep going with things as they are or break routine, double back, and take the unfamiliar route that may draw us closer to the happiness or fulfillment we aren’t experiencing on our well-worn path in life.

My freshman year at William Paterson University, I started a blog called “The Divergent Path: Contemplations of an Anomalous Mind.” It was pretentious, though, in retrospect, quite funny—mainly owing to how misguided I was to believe I was one of the few human beings who isn’t a moron at 18. Whether the following juxtapositions make sense (or not), the words of Frost’s poem run through my decisions to pursue one hobby or worldview over another: being a fan of soccer instead of football; listening to emo instead of pop; fishing with hand-tied flies instead of nightcrawlers; smoking pipes, not cigarettes.

So you can imagine how bummed I was to learn that Frost’s poem is not what it seems.

In The Paris Review, promoting a book he wrote on the subject, David Orr argued that “The Road Not Taken” is the most misinterpreted poem in American history. To ordinary readers, it’s a call to adventure—a manifesto for choosing “the divergent path.” But Frost tended to inject double meaning into his work. “The poem isn’t a salute to can-do individualism,” Orr writes. “It’s a commentary on the self-deception we practice when constructing the story of our own lives.” As Frost shared in his private letters, the poem was tongue-in-cheek. He wasn’t being serious; he was making fun of boneheads like yours truly.

The two roads before the fictional traveler were about the same. One looked more adventure-y, at first. But closer inspection revealed each was just as fair and undisturbed by human boot prints. The last stanza is actually foreshadowing by the narrator. He predicts that one day, when he’s very old, he’ll tell everyone—maybe sighing bigly and pausing for effect—that once had an epic choice to make and that, instead of following the sheeple, he chose what only cool, non-conformists would choose, and that is why he’s still so awesome.

Sound like anyone you know?

Nostalgia, Frost suggests, is a farce. After I wrote the first draft of this column, I popped in the DVD of Midnight in Paris while the rest of my household napped. My subconscious, or the Holy Spirit, led me to it. The story is about an American writer who dreams of living in the Parisian Golden Age of the 1920s and is then magically transported back to that time, where he hangs out with literary titans Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. But, after getting to know the crowd, he’s as bummed as I was to discover that the dreamers of Paris wanted to go back even further. “The 1920s is dull,” a flapper he has a crush on tells him in a bar. “The Belle Époque (1871-1914) was the time to be alive!”

My 87-year-old grandfather, in the tradition of all older people in history, routinely tells me how the world was way better when he was a boy. You know, the glory days of the polio epidemic and kids dying of ear infections because there were no antibiotics. Before c-sections and NICUs, Haley and at least Elio would’ve been dead, too. Since at least 2015, an entire political movement in this country has thrived on the myth that the U.S. used to be way more awesome than it is today: ignoring that as recently as the 1960s, Black kids couldn’t go to school with white ones, 18-year-old boys were shipped off to die in countries they couldn’t find on a map, and the miracle cure for depression was a lobotomy.

While objectively, certain things of the past—physical books over iPads, written correspondence over text messages—were better for our physical and mental health, just as things of the present, like Chick-fil-A, are, I’m not qualified to judge between them. Haley, who is much smarter than I am when it comes to the practical things of life, reminds me every time I get down on myself and want to turn back time that if I had gone to Cambodia during my junior year at Willy P, or if I had studied literature at Oberlin and become a real writer, I wouldn’t have met her. Any of the other roads I could’ve chosen would’ve led me away from the one that gave me what I have now. And even though I wish I didn’t type on a computer for money and had more stamps in my passport, I would be a real turd to say I’d be better off without my wife and children.

Likewise, if I were to rewrite the narrative and pretend that I’m only here, with the good I do have, because I made one choice and not the other, I’d be, at best, naïve, at worst, a liar. Ultimately, it’s not about the road taken or not taken. It’s about the person taking it.

In one of his famous sermons, Jesus of Nazareth told listeners gathered on the hillside near his fishing village that “the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.” In contrast, the gate that leads to life (presumably of the eternal kind) is narrow and the road a hard one. “Those who find it are few,” he said.

I’m not a theologian, but I’ll tell you the first thing I thought of when those verses popped into my brain after my pastor brought up Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” was Crap.

I get so focused on choosing or not choosing the less-traveled road—the one that sounds more epic or contrarian, whether it’s refusing to vote for a listed candidate for president or watching depressing indie flicks instead of superhero blockbusters—and justifying it morally that I ignore the more meaningful decisions I’m asked to make each day. At the fork in the road between gossiping or talking smack versus keeping my mouth shut, for example, I often choose the former. I waste time on morally dubious websites and social media instead of praying for my friends who have cancer. I yell at my kids to go to sleep after a long day because I want alone time instead of goofing off with them for a few more minutes, even though I know how important this time is to the kind of relationship I want to have with them in the long run.

We write these off because they’re not big moral quandaries. Yes, most of us aren’t shooting people we don’t like at Walmart or trying to hook up with our neighbor’s wives. But the carpenter dude also said that if you picture a Dodge Ram running over Donald Trump and smile or ogle at the babe on the front cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue, you’re still in trouble. The narrow gate, the hard road, does not come naturally to human beings (or, at least, it doesn’t to me).

In the past months, my writing has taken a turn as I explore these bigger questions of life. I’m trying to figure out how to be a good dad, husband, and neighbor where God put me instead of lamenting how much happier I’d be if I worked a different job, lived in a different place, or didn’t have all my money sucked up by kids who are constantly contracting viruses and requiring annoying things like clothes and Christmas presents. I’m pulling out onto Brown Gap Road at night and feeling like I’m gonna be run into the ditch at any moment. But I know these questions—this daily wrestling match between my head and my heart, my flesh and my spirit—are worth it, even if I’d rather have easier decisions to make. Easy isn’t always best, I reckon.

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.

Taking the long road from Halls to Farragut for Christmas lights with the squad.

Words from the Wise

“Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little. Make use of time while it is present with you. It depends upon your will, and not upon the number of days, to have a sufficient length of life.

Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Book 1, Chapter 20

“One who wanders from the way of good sense will rest in the assembly of the dead.”

Book of Proverbs, Chapter 21, Verse 16.

Useful Trivia

Popularized by journalist John Tierney’s 2011 article for The New York Times, “decision fatigue” refers to the deteriorating quality of judgments when a person is presented with too many options, such as a buyer trying to select between different flavors of jam at a grocery store, or makes decisions later in the day (e.g., a judge making parole decisions when they’re hungry).

This is the reason why, during his time in the White House, Barack Obama wore the same two suits and used “decision memos” with his staff that had only allowed three options—agree, disagree, let’s discuss—to protect his brain for making big, presidential decisions throughout the day.

What I’m Reading

• I am slowly reading through C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man.

• I am quickly listening to the audiobook of comedian Jim Gaffigan’s Food: A Love Story, usually while thinking about eating.

• In my last Attic Club reflection, I shared anecdotes from when I planned to quit college, partly because of Shane Claiborne’s book The Irresistible Revolution, which I am also listening to for the first time in 10+ years.

What I’m Listening To

• Page CVXI’s Advent to Christmas is my favorite religious Christmas album. Latifah Alattas’s hymn samplers, which preceded it, are also among my favorites.

• For a time last winter, I found and developed an appreciation for the songwriting of younger female artists Lizzie McAlpine and Maggie Rogers. To my surprise, McAlpine was my No. 1 artist of 2024 on Spotify. Rogers’s latest full-length album, Don’t Forget Me, was the soundtrack to my pre-Christmas work week.

• In November, I wrote about still having a soft spot for emo music despite being generally happy by normal (non-artist) standards. Sweet Pill, a band that sounds like a mix of Anthony Green’s Circa Survive (high-school era favorites) and From Indian Lakes (a post-divorce favorite), is so good. I can’t tell you why because I’m not a critic—I’ll leave that to Josh over at The Hurst Review. But if you like great musicality and emotional rock, watch their live Audiotree performance.

What I’m Watching

• Besides Midnight in Paris and the shows Haley and I are working through, I’ve only watched one other film since we last spoke: I Love You, Man, the inspiration for a generation of now 30-something-year-old men talking like morons. The movie took the idea of bromance to new heights. Coupled with Guitar Hero, it also deepened my appreciation of the rock titans Rush.

• If you follow combat sports, you know about the Dagestanis, a largely Muslim mountain people from the North Caucasus whose men dominate international boxing, sambo, wrestling, and mixed martial arts. In 2018, ahead of Khabib Nurmagomedov’s UFC title fight against Conor McGregor, an American filmmaker was invited to document his training camp. The resulting “Dagestan Chronicles” is a close look at a world totally unfamiliar to us in the West. 

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