yellow wood

 

It's 33° in Ann Arbor, Michigan at this early morning moment. Thirty-three, and my weather report has a snowflake. Jeepers! 

Memories slip and can be mistaken. Sometimes a memory gets mixed with another memory and we are certain about something that's not true at all. I'll not search online for weather histories to verify my memory, but our first snow in Ann Arbor that season was mid-October 1962 and our last snow was mid-May 1963. The Michigan summer was idyllic, but winter began the middle of autumn and ended late spring. 

My memory of Ann Arbor includes that automobiles more than three or four years old were rusted to ruin, and that long winter lines of cars were in queue down the street and around the block to drive through a carwash and rinse the salt from under the car. Still, my memory is that I loved absolutely everything about being there, including an aroma of crispy apples that fall. Fondly I remember some of my courses and professors, and that I did well enough at the University that they invited me to stay and pursue a doctorate.

In later years, I worked with a naval officer who had accepted the invitation, and the Navy let him stay for doctoral studies. Looking back on roads diverging in my own yellow wood, if I were standing there this morning, I'd take that other road. But at the Time, I was anxious to get back into Navy life. Now, looking out my 7H window across StAndrews Bay, I'm so happy that I chose the roads that I did in life. Several of those Roads Not Taken would have been so life changing that if I'd gone that way I'd be elsewhere this morning. Everything we think, say, decide, and do in life sets our destiny, at least to the next diverging road.