Walden…A New Perspective

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It is Sunday, (yes…almost a week ago) and I have lamented my loss of words for Walden…(see last post)

I arrive late afternoon, thinking I have cleverly avoided not only the hot sun day crowds, but come at a time when the pond will be under capacity and parking open. So when I arrive at the gate, there being no tweet telling me otherwise, no billboard signs spaced down route 126 from route 2 telling me otherwise, and find a large wooden a-frame sign…park closed for the night… (it is just under 6pm) I am dismayed

I have a migraine and am not sure I want to swim anyway…I just know that having spent all day inside a hospital room, worrying and watching my daughter breathe, I want to be outside. I want to be… I want to be… walking in the woods. I slow, realize I cannot turn in, and hear a ranger leaning out of her DCR pick up truck loudly telling a confused motorist “the beach is overcrowded”

So I head for the nearest parking and walk into Walden woods.

The lazy sunny Sunday and the quiet of the woods is a quiet which is speckled with bird calls and cicada cooing and the chirp of…. it is now I wish I knew more how to name the North American seasonal insects, but I do not…almost a peeping sound…perhaps, a frog? And the pine needles sinking soft under my sandaled feet. This is just what I need and I am basking in having landed right where I am supposed to be. First upon the soft carpet lain last fall, and then upon the sandy soil scattered pebbles and stones crunching as I walk down Emerson Thoreau Amble along the crest of a small hill overlooking the pond. All the time the sonorous woods receding as they are overtaken by the ringing laughter from beyond the woods…
I come out close to the site of Thoreau’s house and follow the well walked pond path over to Sandy Point, passing Wyman meadow across the slat planked wooden bridge.

The golden sunlight filtering through, shedding a glow on grown up ferns and the leafy green canopy over sighting Walden.

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