As night closes in and the snow continues to fall, I head out for an evening walk. The drifts are deep and as the sidewalk is uncleared I am forced to walk in the road, in the uneven tire ruts of salted snow. The path is uneven and challenging, but the exercise is good and needed. The cold bites my face, nips at my ears and I close the front of my coat high around my neck. I pass a beautiful old cemetary that is hidden beneath deep drift and the dark canopy of a beautiful grove of pine trees. The winds rush through their branches and I hear my father's voice reading Robert Frost to me...
"...The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep..."
The memory of my father overtakes me. I find myself wrapped in the comfort and solace of the night, and the realization comes upon me yet again that I truly am my father's son. I recall his own sojourns into similar snowy evenings. The more inclement the weather the more likely he would walk. Somehow we have both found a meditative peace in nature at night. Perhaps it's the fact that the details revealed in daylight are distracting and overpowering to our other senses, but in the darkness of night, especially in the midst of a storm, the more delicate sounds of life are more pronounced; and the "sweep of wind and downy flake..." become the soundtrack to one's thoughts.
And on this night, this storm, during this walk I found a sense of peace, and calm and place. The roads were deserted, the soft golden glow of house lights spilled out across the drifts of snow and as I walked past frozen rivers and fields I could sense the world of my small town was safe and warm and bedding down in their homes.
It was my father that first introduced me to the poetry of Robert Frost, and it was this poet who pulled back the cold curtain of winter to reveal the mystery and beauty of a New England winter.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
BY ROBERT FROST
"Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep."
Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1923, © 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., renewed 1951, by Robert Frost. Reprinted with the permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Source: Collected Poems, Prose, & Plays (Library of America, 1995)