Promises to keep

On my last day of being 45, my mami (who is visiting for my birthday), my husband and I went hiking at a regional park that's (appropriately) about 45 minutes away.

We all wanted to enjoy the last weekend of peak colors in this area before the forecast first frost tonight denudes the trees.

Walking through the woods, we were reminded of Robert Frost's famous poem about stopping by the woods on a snowy evening. It wasn't snowing or evening, more like an early fall afternoon, so the woods weren't dark, but they were lovely and deep.

My husband told the story of how Frost was once asked by a scholar about his decision to repeat the line: "And miles to go before I sleep," at the close of the poem.

"Was that to underline the fleetingness of life and the impending march toward death?" the scholar asked Frost.

The room fell silent as everyone awaited Frost's answer, as if an Oracle were to speak.

"I needed another rhyme to end the poem," Frost is reputed to have said, matter-of-factly.

There is nothing more matter-of-fact than the woods.

The hike, which took us through on a path much-taken alongside old oaks that towered toward the white puffy clouds and young sugar maples festooned in their cotton-candy colors, offered surprise after surprise of sunlit greens and fiery yellows and flamboyant oranges, all rippling in the shadows of dappled sunshine.

My mami pointed to a sign, in front of a grove of sugar maples, which said the trees were young, at age 60-something.

"That's a good attitude to have," my mami said.

"I'll think of myself as being young, like a sugar maple," I determined.

The canvas against which the trees painted themselves was an azure-bright sky. The canvas against which the forest sketched itself was greyish-black.

After about an hour of feasting our eyes and our senses in the quietude of the woods, the path ended. Our hike over, we were reminded that we all had promises to keep, and miles to go before bedtime.

It was time to return home just as sun began its slow descent into sleep.