Back Road Not Taken

My husband and I recently drove out of Camp Blue at the Lair of the Golden Bear near Pinecrest Lake to go down the mountain to the Twain Harte Market for supplies. We decided to take a back road returning to camp, instead the usual highway 108 through the Stanislaus National Forest. John and I ended up on a wild and scenic and delightful drive down “Lyons Lake Road” and a series of other more-or-less-maintained fire roads. We ended up backtracking 12 miles after the “road” abruptly headed into a steep uphill gully filled with big stones (we did not have four wheel drive or a winch on the front of our Mercedes SUV).

At one point, we were faced with the classic dilemma of poet Robert Frost:

The Road Not Taken
Robert Frost, 1920

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;	     

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,	      

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.	   

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.

We saw some amazing pink-brown lava aggregate boulders in the alpine meadows the road wandered through at 5,000 feet above sea level:

Also many deer, rabbit, raccoon and other animal tracks in the dust of the road:

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Images Copyright 2011 Katy Dickinson