I almost never select the same poet two months in a row, but this month’s poem by Walt Whitman was simply too perfect to pass up.
I’m heading out tomorrow for my annual trip to Portugal’s wine region, where I will spend a week with wine friends touring and tasting through the Douro Valley. This will be my third year visiting there during harvest, and one line from this month’s selection, “The long brown path before me” makes me recalled the rugged beauty of the rocky Portuguese vineyards seemingly far away from the rest of the world. The Douro Valley is a far cry from places like Napa or Walla Walla, mainly because there simply are not a lot of tourists, shopping, spas, or other amenities you’d fine in many other wine regions. Maybe I love it for the fact that such a place of simple ruggedness and beauty produces such amazing Ports and wines from its rocky soils. It’s a magical place, and I am looking forward to arriving there in a matter of hours.
Portugal will be followed by a few days in the UK, visiting friends, catching a show in the West End, attending a monumental Cockburn Port tasting reaching back to the 1890’s, enjoying some museums and…well, since I’ve always been such an Anglophile…just taking in the sheer history of the place.
I hope you are all doing well, and I leave you with a selection from Walt Whitman’s Songs of the Open Road…
Walt Whitman
(1819 – 1892)
From Song of The Open Road
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading me wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune.
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
