visit Walden Pond

i did it as a kid…growing up in boston you go there a lot if you’re in summer camp at the boys n girls club or the ymca. i was like every year. i don’t remember it but i know i’ve been.

but I’d still like to go there again. It’s not really the place Thoreau wrote about, now that civilization has encroached on it and succeeding generations have used it for skinny-dipping and literary tourism, but it’s still possible to imagine what it might have looked like in his eyes. I’m a sucker for the old Transcendentalists, being something of a dewy-eyed idealist myself (at least in the parts of my brain that haven’t already turned cynical). I feel as though the entire Concord area is hallowed ground, where, if you stood quietly and long enough, you might hear distinct and unmistakable echoes of the thoughts of Bronson Alcott and Fuller and Emerson and Thoreau.

Thoreau’s Walden has long been one of my favorite books. I was 16 when I read it for the first time. Out of school for a few days with a strep throat and bored of watching General Hospital on the boob tube, I plucked the dusty volume from a shelf, knowing little about it other than that it was regarded an American classic. Two weeks later, having devoured this great book, I was quoting pearls of Thoreau’s wisdom to interested classmates. Walden wasn’t then, and isn’t now, required reading in high school. It should be, especially in our consumer crazed society. I plan on visiting the pond this spring. Maybe take my bike. Yeah…

Thoreau retreated to a simpler life by a pond in massachusetts. He wanted the time and freedom to contemplate the meaning of life. I want to do visit this site and re-read the book. (I will visit the site if it still exists)