Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose. So begins the much-quoted, essentially American poem, “Song of the Open Road,” by the essentially American poet, Walt Whitman-- Leaves of Grass , 1856. It all sounds so beckoning as Whitman calls, Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d! Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d! Let the