Walden Pond
On a drive through Western Mass one day in the spring…
Mike: “Oh yeah, there’s Walden Pond up here on the left. We should come here in the summer when it’s warm and go swimming.”
Me: “Wait, like THAT Walden Pond? Like, the ‘I went to the woods Thoreau Walden Pond?’”
Mike: “Yeah! That Walden Pond. It’s right here.”
Me: “Holy shit that’s awesome!”
Mike: “You’ve never been?”
Me: “No! But you can go swimming there?! Like IN the pond?”
Mike: “Yeah, there’s like a beach there and you can bring food and blankets and go swimming. People canoe out there and fish too. We’ll go when it’s warm and go swimming.”
Me: [mind blown]
Fast-forward to one perfect Summer day and we’ve packed the car for a road trip. Walden is situated on RT 126, on a two lane road in the middle of the woods. It is a beautiful scenic drive. And you can really take in the tranquility of it all as your car slows to a stop when you find yourself in bumper to bumper beach traffic.
Because it is so beautiful, and because Thoreau was big on that whole nature conservation thing, Walden caps visitors to prevent overcrowding. So when we arrived on a hot Saturday in June, we had to wait our turn to get in. As we approached the entrance, a large sign in the road declared the beach had reached capacity that morning and would re-open for visitors at 1:00pm.
So we drove to the Natick Mall and took in some not-so-tranquil surroundings. We returned to Walden at precisely 1:05pm and were granted entrance to this special little slice of rustic paradise.
The pond is startlingly clear and calm. The water is smooth and soft to the touch. We slipped in along the backside of the pond where the crowds were sparse and waded in. No fish were in sight. Just smooth rocks and pebbles beneath your feet. I could definitely see why Thoreau made this his happy place.
Along the back of the pond is a little footpath that, if you follow it, leads to a small bridge, which leads into the forest.
And that forest opens up into a clearing where a square of stones mark the site of Thoreau's famous one-room cabin in the woods. The original home has long since returned to nature, but the historical marker gives you a sense of the foundations. A replica of the cabin stands opposite the highway near the visitors center.
"Beneath these stones lies the Chimney Foundation of Thoreau's Cabin 1845-1847. Go then my incense upward from this hearth."
The cabin also had an adjacent woodshed, marked here by a stone.
The opening lines of Thoreau's most famous work, Walden.
A large stone cairn sits opposite the site. Original fans and visitors brought rocks and pebbles (including Walt Whitman in 1881), as a way to pay respects and add to the memorial. The cairn was built where historians presumed the cabin to be based on writings, but the actual remnants of the house were unearthed a few feet away by amateur archeologist Roland Wells Robbins in 1945.
Some of the rocks are stacked in very impressive ways. Gravity-defying, even.
And here is the view from the house if you were standing in the doorway, looking through the trees, and out onto the pond in the late afternoon.
"I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor.... My house was on the side of a hill, immediately on the edge of the larger woods, in the midst of a young forest of pitch pines and hickories, and a half dozen rods from the pond, to which a narrow footpath led down the hill."
