Blue Highways Are Better

"The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost is my absolute favorite poem.  If you don't know it, read through it, and I’ll tell you why it means so much to me.

"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 marked 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.

For Easter this year, my boys and I decided to head to the “low country” to visit my brother and his family in their new home in Charleston, S.C. We had a few school-free days, so we were excited to escape and see some new territory. We love road trips!

One of our guiding principles has always been to “take the road less traveled.”  Not only do we love to trek across the country, we most enjoy taking “blue highways,” which are defined by author William Least Heat-Moon as “small, forgotten, out of the way roads connecting rural America (which were drawn in blue on the old style Rand McNally road atlas),” in his 1982 autobiography, “Blue Highways.”

These roads less traveled are often the most memorable and the most indicative of the fabric of our nation.

I’ll admit that on this most recent trip we did take the interstate for a good portion, but as we traveled home we decided to hop off I-95 and explore the rolling hills and farms of rural Maryland. It was beautiful.

There were quaint general stores, cows grazing on hills, fields of gorgeous flowers and crops under way. We drove over rickety old covered bridges and watched a helicopter spraying the crops. Stone barns and split rail fences lined the winding road.

Every time we venture off the main highways, I think to myself, “This is how it used to be. This was the way people had to travel. This is how they really got to know about the country in which they live and more about each other."

It occurs to me that our interstates can be compared to those “big box” stores we so often like to bash for their impersonal service and anonymity. Everyone is just passing through looking for speed and convenience with little care about experiencing their surroundings or getting to know the people.

Blue highways might take a little longer, might suck up more gas and might not be as smooth as the interstates. But one thing is for sure -- they open our eyes to a world that would otherwise be passed right by.

Some of my family’s greatest “blue highway” memories include a sudden cattle drive in Colorado, moose on a logging road in northwestern Maine, a unique "depot" store on an Indian reservation in Lame Deer, Montana, the world’s oldest living thing (the ancient bristlecone pines in eastern California), roadside farm stands in rural Vermont, and thousands of acres of golden sunflowers in North Dakota. Those are just a few.

Our country is full of hidden treasures just waiting to be discovered.

Next time you take your family on a road trip, think of the value you might add by checking out a blue highway – even if it’s just for part of your trip. It might make “all the difference.”