Poetry on the Trail

Does reciting poetry on the trail make "all the difference," as Robert Frost once wrote? At Backpacker, Nick Davidson describes the joy of memorizing and reciting poetry while backpacking in the wild. In his introduction, Davidson remarks "Two roads diverged in an emerald wood. But unlike Robert Frost, I knew where I stood and had traveled both. One path meandered east, deeper into northern New Mexico’s Pecos Wilderness. The other veered steeply south to Nambe Lake, walled in the granitic shadow of 12,409-foot Lake Peak. The choice was easy. With Frost as my companion, I had come to hike the latter, the trail less traveled." We'll catch up to him there:

I admit I felt foolish at first, speaking rhymes out loud to no one. When I passed another hiker, I’d pause or mumble with mild embarrassment and an acknowledging nod. Just another crazy guy in the woods talking to himself. But then, in different contexts, we do this all the time, orating into our phones on sidewalks and in supermarkets.

But this is about being unplugged. No phone, no tinny earbuds, nothing to soundtrack my hikes but metered, hundred-year-old verse pacing out my footfalls. Pair the right poem with the right landscape and you layer another dimension of meaning onto familiar paths.

I figured this out some years ago when a friend challenged me to a poetry slam at our next Rio Chama camping trip. I chose Poe’s “The Raven,” which I’d learned in high school (and then mostly forgot), to follow his recitation of Robert Service’s “The Cremation of Sam McGee.”

To learn more, hike on over to Backpacker.