Where did the road diverge?

In "The Road Not Taken," the road diverged or split to go in two different directions in a yellow wood. That the wood is yellow suggests the walk took place in fall, when the leaves on the trees had turned color. We can also picture the road as a path in the woods, an idea reinforced when the narrator notes that one fork was grassy, although both forks were more or less equally worn.
Therefore, we know the narrator is in a rural, wooded setting, far from major roads or highways. There aren't going to be any trucks nor cars barreling down on him in this quiet place where he is pondering which way to turn.
Although we associate Frost with New England and think of him as an iconic American poet, which he was, this poem was written when he was living in England early in his career. Thus, in the most general sense, the road he travels on could be diverging in England.


According to the poem, the "roads diverged in a yellow wood." It's impossible to pinpoint the exact location of these woods from a reading of the text. Judging by the poet's life, however, it's more than likely they were the woods outside Dymock in Gloucestershire, England. Frost lived there in 1915 and 1916, becoming an integral part of the group loosely referred to as the Dymock Poets. Another of these poets, and a close friend of Frost's, was Edward Thomas, who suffered from depression and often had trouble making important decisions. Frost and Thomas would often walk among the woods near Dymock. Some have surmised that the poem is simply Frost's way of making fun of his friend's ambivalence. Unfortunately, upon reading the poem, Thomas made the decision to enlist in the British Army, then fighting the Germans during World War I. Thomas was killed in action not long after arriving in France in 1917.
It's also entirely possible that Frost had no particular place in mind when he wrote the poem and that these woods are simply figurative. The poem is an extended metaphor about an important decision in a person's life such as a career choice or a life changing event. The divergence in the road is symbolic of two separate paths in life. Frost may have been referring to his own decision to lead a literary life. In any case, it is assumed that the reader will relate to the poem because of its universal theme.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jul/29/robert-frost-edward-thomas-poetry

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