I Go Out Walking After Midnight

I've had a small hiatus from writing.  During that time I was reading, traveling, and walking in the woods.  Between trains and planes, I devoured four books over the journey.  (More to come later on those).  For now, the memories I'm holding onto are my walks in the woods.

For hours, I'd follow small trails, hoping I was on the right path and eager to see the small yellow signs which had my destination village.  These signs also had a small snowman on them which I never quite managed to make out.  I didn't see any snowmen.

Since returning, I've had Robert Frost's "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening" and Thoreau's Walden mulling around in my brain.  The item which sticks with me most:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life..."

- Henry David Thoreau