October 29, 2013 Rose Hill, Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood

Rose Hill Plantation can be reached from Hwy 176 in Union, SC by turning  southeast on Sardis Road and traveling through the country for about 12 miles.  I reached it from Hwy 176 between Whitmire and Union following signs through the Sumter National Forest where the trees are turning yellow and orange and red. From there it is about 7 miles.

All at once, the forest is decimated by commercial timber companies.  The remaining gray trunks and branches of trees lie abandoned on the ground like a moonscape.  Then, on the right, a new forest of pine is growing.

In forest again along the way there are red pick up trucks parked driverless in turnoffs.  It is still hunting season.

The plantation house is on the right, surrounded by tended gardens of sassanqua, roses and boxwood.
The fragrance of the boxwood floats on the air.  I have toured this antebellum house in the past.  I remember the second floor ballroom with two pianos.  There is a slave cabin and a kitchen outback, another cabin with restrooms and another with the ranger office and gift shop.  This was the home of the Secessionist Governor, William Gist.  No one is around.

I finally find the one lonely ranger who is getting ready to go to lunch.  I am carrying an orange T-shirt to wear on the trails so that I will not be mistaken for a deer.  The ranger tells me that it is probably safe to walk the short nature trail on the state park site property, but the .9 mile spur down to the Tyger River is on Sumter National Forest land and the hunters are out there.  She tells me to come back in January or February when hunting season is over.

I take my orange T shirt and leave, trying to remember the poem,

The Road Not Taken

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!
Ye 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.

Robert Frost