A Hike in the Forest.

Nearing the end of our two-mile hike in dense forest, 11-year-old Mabrion and I were trailblazing, bushwhacking, our way across a mountainside for a shorter and quicker way home. Mabrion, in the lead, veered left beneath a huge Colorado Spruce. I couldn't so easily duck under it so took another way around to the right.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood," I heard him say, "and I took the one less traveled."

"What did you say?" I said.

He repeated it. "...and I took the one less traveled. I love poetry."

So old man and young man talked poetry for the rest of our way home to waiting water and Grandma.

"One of my favorites," he said, "is called No Enemies. Do you know it?"

Before I could say No he was reciting it, pausing a few times as the exact wording failed him.

You have no enemies, you say?
Alas! my friend, the boast is poor;
He who has mingled in the fray
Of duty, that the brave endure,
Must have made foes! If you have none,
Small is the work that you have done.
You’ve hit no traitor on the hip,
You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip,
You’ve never turned the wrong to right,
You’ve been a coward in the fight.

Looking it up on Bartleby.com when we returned, we discovered the author, Charles Mackay.

A grandpa can take great pride in knowing a young man like this is growing up in his family.

Sitting on the deck when we got home I read to him--no, no reciting--a couple of my favorites by Robert Service. I think he would have preferred something more philosophical than The Cremation of Sam McGee.