Thanks to the rains this year, the hills have been alive with color for months! And it’s the tall yellow mustard that gets me. Swaths of sparkling flowers in the sunshine, looking much like paint spilled from Heaven. I don’t remember ever seeing the area like this (though I must admit I’ve missed more than a few years here.) One hill in particular keeps calling to me: a lone electric yellow bump in the landscape. It rises just beyond the High School where I drop and retrieve Maki every day. And every day, I think: I’ve got to get up there before its too late and the flowers are faded down to the brown of every-year. Yesterday afternoon, I found myself in the area without kids in the car…and snuck out for a little walk at last. A mini-adventure, a getaway in the middle of a normal day in my normal town. The wild mustard stalks were so high and plentiful that there was nothing to be seen but the yellow plants and the blue sky. A temporary layover on another planet where no one else existed but lizards and butterflies in the scent of milk and honey.

Bear with me as I narrate these photos with a little Robert Frost—and pretend that these are my woods.

The Road Less Traveled —by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.