The Road Not Taken

Inside A Midwestern Town

Bianca Llerena

If you take your bike, a backpack, and maybe a light jacket, you could spend a nice day in any small Midwestern town. In your backpack, you can put any old book you have, a small notebook and pencil, a few plastic grocery bags, a sheet of paper, and any coin.

Hopefully, it’s a warm autumn day or the cusp of spring. If you'd like, grab some headphones; I would recommend playing some Death Cab for Cutie, Band of Horses, The Shins, or Neutral Milk Hotel, but whatever you like works too.

In this small town, there’s much to observe. There’s trees, so many trees, with different colored leaves that hang, and their shadows forming pretty shapes along the soft grass. With your book, you can find the prettiest leaves and keep them flattened between the pages. Take them home to dry.

The further you bike, the more likely you are to find a stream, a brook, or a small pond. Thank goodness for your grocery bags, as you can wrap them around your sneakers and take a little impromptu walk through the water, allowing you to cross any landscape. 

And since you're at this small pond, you might as well take out that piece of paper and build a boat, and watch as it sails with the patterns the wind draws for it. Watch how things move. Make sure you follow it along the curves of the river so you can rescue it and take it back home.

Then, as the clouds continue to move and shift in the air, take out your notebook and pencil and try to draw the types of clouds you see. Document. If your artistic abilities are strong enough, you can name them once you get home.

Lastly, and if you still have time, take out the coin you brought and let it choose your path. Don’t let the path less traveled phase you; heads means head left, and tails means tail right.