I don’t have a lot of memories of spending time with just my father as a child. Between his job (Mom did not have a full-time job from the time I was 2 until I was about 14) and my two brothers, we were rarely alone together. But he did teach me how to ski, and I remember on the long, quiet chairlift ride up the mountain in the early morning, he would sometimes recite Robert Frost poems to me. The two I remember best are “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “The Road Not Taken.” I still have a book of Robert Frost’s poetry in my library, and I have a framed copy of “The Road Not Taken” that my fraternity brothers gave me when I graduated from college. While I love the hush and peace of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” it’s been “The Road Not Taken” that has spoken to me about life in general. So when I saw the final stanza engraved on a gravestone, I had to photograph it.
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.
-Robert Frost
A Grave Concern 