When I’m on a vacation, be it a month-long backpacking trip or weekend jaunt, each day I plan to leave a section of Walt Whitman’s Song of the Open Road. I might leave it in a B&B guestbook, tuck a note behind a hotel painting or write it on a dollar bill I spend at a hot dog stand. In any case, I’ll be tracking where I leave the poem here. I call it The Open Road Project. Click on the stanzas below to find out where they’ve been left and track the poem’s progress here.
I left the twentieth section of the poem stuck to a tree on the Broadwing Farms Cabin property, where we set out for a little walk on Saturday morning. Nothing like a brisk (OK, cold) walk after a big breakfast, knowing a cold beer and a hot tub await you when you return.
From this hour I ordain myself loosed of limits and imaginary lines, going where I list, my own master total and absolute
