Photos, Frost and Flowers

I think Opie’s favorite part of our recent hikes is the way I seamlessly blend culture and nature, thus adding education and intellectual enlightenment to his days.

This is especially true when we are hiking early Saturday morning after a lengthy celebration at our favorite pub, George’s.

Like last Saturday when we hiked Turkey Mountain. We got up early (one of us under duress and protesting weakly) and headed over to this urban wilderness area in South Tulsa.

“Which way do you think we should go?” He asked. 

“I, I take the road less travelled by,”  I  said. And when he just stared at me, I assured him “It’ll make all the difference.”

Oddly, he doesn’t seem to find this illuminating at all.

It also didn’t seem to be helpful when I said “I’m sorry we can’t take them both, I’ll just look down this one as far as I can, to where it bends in the undergrowth.”

“What are you talking about?” He asked.

“You know you read these Robert Frost poems in school!” I shouted.

“I was a computer major.” He said.

“High school, you should have read them in high school!”

“I didn’t,” he assured me.

But I was pretty sure he had and just didn’t remember…probably he only needed a few more notable lines thrown his way to jog his memory and open his mind.

“And make us happing in the darting bird, that suddenly above the bees is heard.”

“I can’t hear you,” he said then but I’m pretty sure this was a lie. So I tried again. “Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold.  Her early leaf a flower but only so an hour.” And that didn’t seem to ring any bells either.

 “Oh my Ponyboy Curtis!” I said. “I know you read The Outsiders!”

“I saw the movie,” he said and that’s when I knew he was messing with me because we have the same strong feelings about reading books before watching movies based on them.

“Should we start back?” He asked.

And I tried to explain that we still had miles to go before we sleep, miles to go before we sleep…

…but I guess I was wrong.