Intersection in Concord, MA

I grabbed some breakfast at Dunkin Donuts and headed up toward The Walden Woods Workshop. Turning right, I glanced up at the street signs and smiled. “That’s a metaphor for this whole week,” I thought, “the intersection of Thoreau and Walden.”

Before this workshop, if you’d asked me about Henry David Thoreau, I would have mentioned Walden and might, later, have remembered to add “Civil Disobedience.” In my mind I had merged the man with the location. Big mistake.

There is more to Walden Pond than its most famous temporary resident, as our nature walks have revealed. Sandy soil unfit for farming helped preserve the trees. Its water is crystal clear, even though no stream enters or exits it. Spotted salamanders, a variety of frogs and toads, and a chorus of birds form a portion of the rich biodiversity here. Now part of the Massachusetts State Reservation (Park) system, the pond is also a popular hiking, picnicking, and swimming spot.

And there is much more to Thoreau than a cabin in the woods. Throughout his life he was an active member of his community, a highly respected surveyor, a powerful speaker and writer, a keen observer of nature, and a good friend.

For a period of 2 years, 2 months, and 2 days, the man and the pond intersected; and the result was a book that has resonated with readers so much that it has not gone out of print since the year Thoreau died. It’s a good book, but not the only thing he wrote. Living in the woods was a wonderful experiment, but not the only valuable thing he ever did.

As Thoreau himself wrote in Walden:

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. … I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

This week’s workshop has been a tremendous intersection of location, experts, and colleagues. It is time for us, however, like Thoreau, to return to the other lives we live.

*****
I’m blogging this week from Walden Pond, where I am attending the Approaching Walden workshop sponsored by The Walden Woods Project.

Posted Fri, 20 Jul 2007 00:01:34 and filed under Workshop, Language Arts, Literature. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.