Robert Frost and Rusty Things

 

I should have taken a picture of the maple scones my daughter baked for our poetry tea time, but, though they were Instagram worthy, they disappeared too quickly. It was just one of those mornings. When the treats were gone, the children mostly slumped in their seats while I read them Robert Frost’s poems: “The Road Not Taken,” “Mending Wall,” “The Cow in Apple Time.” No special snack could sway the children from resting their foreheads on the table, showing only a glimmer of interest as we moved on to our read-aloud, and found the Boxcar Children digging for treasures in an old dump.

                Then suddenly, my oldest daughter raised her head from the table and declared, “We should hike to the dump!” It seems that every old New England acreage has, somewhere on it, an old dump. Ours is in a gully in the woods and made up of aged rusty hulls of ringer washers and riding toys. There are lots of glass jars, car parts, and a single lace-up leather boot. The kids are normally forbidden from playing down there what with the risk of tetanus and all, but today a hike to the dump seemed necessary and could loosely be called educational, though it wasn’t in the lesson plans.

                Spirits began to lift as soon as we were bug-sprayed and gloved. Soon they were full of conjectures and questions about what era the Boxcar Children lived in and what Benny would do with the wheels they had found in today’s chapter. Wheels! We found all matter of wheels at the dump: the front wheel of a tricycle (pedal still attached), a four-wheeled push toy (a play lawn mower or baby buggy?), and the curved rusted wheel wells of a long-ago vehicle. We figured that if you put all the parts together, you could build a 1930s era truck.

After surveying the dump, and successfully avoiding injury, we decided to hike further into the woods, through the ferns and mossy rocks in the dry creek bed.

                The bored, sleepy children were suddenly full of questions: “Wasn’t it cool that Robert Frost homeschooled his kids? Wasn’t that poem he wrote about the cow in the orchard funny? It reminded us of our pigs eating apples. What kind of rocks are these? Is this granite? What age do you think Henry, Jessie, and Violet were? When you are writing a story what are the best ages for kids to be? Look how the roots of that tree have pulled up stones. Look at how the drought has dried up the creek.

                We returned home just in time for lunch with plenty of energy for the rest of our schoolwork, and all because we took a hike to the dump.

                So instead of a picture of homemade maple scones and stacks of illustrated poetry books, I took a picture of this rusty thing in the woods.

Yet, somehow, I think Robert Frost would approve…

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.”