The Robert Frost Trail

Kirsten Rohstedt

How to get there: Robert Frost Trail is quite well marked on the right-hand side of Route 125 as you head east toward the Snow Bowl; it's about halfway between Ripton village and the college's Bread Loaf Campus.

The Robert Frost trail is a gentle walk through the woods. If you do not wish to, you do not have to ascend any hills. If you like, you can pause at several spots along the way, sit on a bench to contemplate the scenery, or read one of the several markers on which are printed various poems of Robert Frost. The trail was created, as the marker at its entrance explains, to show what one of Frost's own walks through the woods might have been like. These are, after all, his home woods-- the ones for which so many of his poems were written. The importance of this history is made clear to you before you make your first step upon the path itself; throughout this whole hike, you will be listening to the thoughts of a poet who stepped here before you, as his words guide you through his woods.

The trail begins with several bridges, which cross over streams forming thick ribbons through the marshy lower land. My group- -Jen, Patrick, and I-- paused on each of these bridges to look out over the frozen water. The stillness of January lent itself well to the reeds and grasses along the water's edge, edges that I imagined were a chorus of chirps and ribbits all through the summer. One of these creeks had a beaver dam on one side, which looked across the water at a silent birdhouse. These two little homes seemed not so much abandoned as waiting, waiting for the water to unfreeze and for everything to turn green and noisy once again.

Once over the bridges, the trail turns to the right and winds up though pine woods. Every hundred yards or so, beside a thicket or small pond, a poem would appear carved neatly into a plank of wood. At each of these markers we paused, read the words and then looked up at the scene it was supposed to represent. In some cases the words fit the landscape perfectly. For example, at the marker into which was carved "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- / I took the one less traveled by, /And that has made all the difference", the trail did actually split in two (although, as the map explained, they were actually the same trail, just looping around). In other places the words were just beautiful to read and the scene beautiful to see, although the two did not seem directly connected. Always though, our stopping to look at the forest around us and to read the poetry were welcome pauses.

Twenty minutes into the trail, a little path broke off and led to a lookout over a bend in a stream; the ground was a moist, pungent, brown-orange mix of mossy soil and needles from the White Pines towering over our heads. This portion of the trail was like a room set apart from the rest, painted in vibrant watercolors, a strong contrast to the grey winter tones shading most of the landscape. And unlike the rest of the trail, which looped around to find itself again in a never-ending circle, this portion jutted off like a branch from a tree. Once you reached its end by the water, the only way to continue--without getting soaked--was to turn back and retrace your steps.

Back on the main trail, we wandered through patchy woods which suddenly opened up into a clearing of grasses and small shrubs, in the center of which leaned a snowman. We posed for pictures with "Frosty", and made him a new smile out of twigs, so that if he had to melt, he could at least melt happy. This snowman stood as a little monument to his namesake. He was a lighthearted thing, but still showed the signs of his coming inevitable demise. In his poetry, Frost wove together these contrasting themes; the beauty of a moment in nature and the dark reality and intransigence of death. Frost recognized Time's eroding nature, and noted that the works of nature were no more immune to change than the works of man.

The snowman was the only sign of people we had seen on our walk, with the exception of Robert Frost's words themselves. The solitude seemed appropriate, because when we stopped talking the only sound would be the occasional bird's call and the distant murmur of running water. You could imagine that, even if the trees and shrubs had changed since Robert Frost walked in these woods, the noises we were listening to were the same. We could hear his quiet moments in the woods.

The path walked the edge of the small clearing, passed under some trees, and then opened again into a large clearing with mountains looming above it in the sky. A large marker gave us both Frost's words and the names of these mountains: "Fire Tower Hill, Breadloaf, Battell Mountain, Kirby Peak, Burnt Hill." Our eyes were lifted from the fast-growing plants and ever-changing streams, to the still giants glowing purple against a grey-blue sky. These, like the chirps of wintering birds and distant streams' noises, had been here for Frost-- and for every other person to walk through this portion of Vermont, in the few years of the world's existence that man has been doing such things.

The path curved around this clearing like a raindrop, at its widest curve meeting up with another stream,another bench, and the poem, "Going for Water"-- "We heard, we knew we heard the brook. / A note as from a single place, / A slender tinkling fall that made / Now drops that floated on the pool / Like Pearls, and now a silver blade." This stream was almost completely frozen over, with its rushing water singing under ice. I imagined the pearls and knives beneath the ice's surface, then realized that this thought would not have come to me if not for Frost's words on the marker at my side. I did not mind, though, that these images had been suggested to me. Frost was making for a pleasant walking companion--one whose own views expanded rather than hindered my own.

From this watery scene we turned back in the direction from which we had come, only to be met by a sign explaining the burning of the clearings. Every few years the grasses, shrubs, and saplings here are burnt to maintain the blueberry and huckleberry bushes' presence along the path, as well as to insure offering "glimpses of surrounding scenery." I tried to imagine the snowy white field turned black--its puddles and rivers dried and burnt, yet with tiny green shoots poking up from the ground. That scene must have shocked some visitors to this trail, although hopefully they paused long enough to see the miracle of huckleberries emerging from the ashes.

Near the end of the trail, things became familiar; a large tree in the distance, the bridges through the marshy soil, the occasional sound of cars passing on route 125. It felt as if we were returning home, although we'd only been walking for an hour. Looking down, I saw that we were retracing our own footprints, heading in the opposite direction now. Like Frost had done so many times, we had walked silently through these woods, pausing for quiet moments to look and listen as we would have done on any other trail. Only here, this consummate New England poet's thoughts had been left scattered along the route for us to stop and wonder at. The echoes of Frost's thoughts, however, were a welcome addition. I was glad he had shown his woods to us.