Like to think my wife and I have the same sense of wonder

My favorite poem is Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken.” This column is about the road not taken, but trust me it isn’t as deep as the poem.

I’ve always been a fan of wandering country roads. Since I got wheels it was a favorite thing to do. Over the years I’ve traveled miles and miles with a shotgun, fishing pole or camera. Just longing to see what’s over the hill or around the next bend of the river.

I’m surprised I’ve not ended up walking or hitchin’ any more than I have. I’ve been blessed in that respect, sometimes with luck, other times with a mechanically gifted passenger.

I’ve taken my share of sketchy routes but I think I came about it genetically. I remember taking roads with my dad, sometimes in a station wagon and sometimes in a step cab Ford six-cylinder where we shouldn’t have been. He got us through and I always considered him pretty fearless.

I can still remember the thrill of him loading us into the Willy’s Jeep he ran for a while to irrigate out of. Down to the gravel pits to climb the hills or out to Chalk Hill to climb one side of the highway cut then roll back across the highway and up the other side in reverse. Hey, those were the only places in the county you could use four-wheel-drive to climb.

I think that Jeep was the only vehicle he ever owned with a four-wheel-drive until the last one he owned.

I got a lot better at driving mountain roads and using four-wheel-drive after a decade and a half living in Colorado. I didn’t have much in the way of vehicles, but I wasn’t afraid to drive them into the backcountry.

I sent a cousin’s wife into full-blown panic attack one day on a scree slope to historic Crystal Mill in my S-10 Blazer. Everyone else, including her daughter, was laughing and having a great time.

A few year’s later on the same road my dear old dad chickened out when he couldn’t see where the road was ever going to exit a flooded spot.

He nearly came unglued when I took that last new pickup of his up a road to an alpine fishing lake. I’ll admit it was a little rougher that day than the last time I had been on it. That pickup is still on the road decades later, so I guess I didn’t tear it up too bad.

Fortunately my wife was always up for riding with me while I burned up film and dirt roads. I like to think she has the same sense of wonder about that road we’ve never taken. It could be that neither of us ever had much common sense, however.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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