Whether under the title of “the road less travelled” (see here), “off the beaten path” (see above), or “the road not taken” (see below), I think we all have wondered if we are on the right one or if somewhere along the way we missed a turn and perhaps ought to take a detour or even make a u-turn. I for one try to concentrate on the road ahead of me rather than fixate on the rearview mirror for long.

With that said, I was thinking about our journey to date and noticed a trend worth contemplating a little more closely. Linda and I tend to live in places adjacent to more popular (read: populated) places, thus allowing us to live affordably yet with access to more expensive amenities. For example, we now live in one of the smaller towns in the Shenandoah Valley yet are close to pricier places like Charlottesville and Roanoke.

Earlier, we lived in the award-winning town of Franklin, a little south of the much bigger and busier city of Nashville. Before that we lived for several years in the quaint town of Mount Dora outside of the tourist capital of Orlando. And even earlier, we lived in the bucolic town of Broken Arrow, a growing suburb of much larger Tulsa. All of which is to say there are benefits to living outside the bubble of bigger places.

But I think it is worth noting that the beaten path is rarely one of least resistance. There are tradeoffs with doing so, as with anything in life, such as sacrificing conveniences that come with living in cities, including malls and airports. Yet malls are dying and many airports are dysfunctional if not dystopian. We have not flown in years and we try to shop local when necessary so we do not feel we are missing much at all.

In my experience, the immortal words of author George Moore ring true: “A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.” And no one says it better than poet Robert Frost in his poem The Road Not Taken: “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.”