Adventioneering

It was almost a year ago that I went to Walden Pond , the only time I have been there. Like many people I had read Thoreau’s 1854 classic “Walden”. If you are not familiar, it chronicles Thoreau’s life living in a small cabin that he built himself near the shore of Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Ever since reading the book I had wanted to visit the place to feel perhaps that sense of connection.

Although I lived in Waltham, MA basically right off the street that leads to Walden Pond, it took about a year for me to make it out there. It was finally a nice quiet, cold day and despite the snow it only took a few minutes to make the trip in the TJ.

Walden built his cabin through barter and about thirty dollars in cash. In today’s dollars, that would be about $665. He hoped to isolate himself from the nearby community of Concord and experiment with living a more “natural” existence.

The Walden area is now a state reservation. This means you get to pay for parking to visit the site of the man who took a vacation from civilization. I was in utter shock as I paid the little robot parking machine $5 for the privilege.

Nobody had de-iced or cleared the sidewalks around the elaborate interpretive reconstruction of Thoreau’s cabin, so I guessed the parking money must be going someplace else.

As I walked down to the pond I reflected on how Thoreau is widely regarded to be one of the founding fathers of the conservationist movement. Back when the population was so low, land was plentiful and game seemed unlimited, it was probably hard to conceptualize having to preserve any of it. There was, I am sure it seemed, enough.

Thoreau wrote “A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It’s earth’s eye, looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature”. Walden is pretty, but not majestic. It is not like the western lakes cut out of alpines or laying in valleys. It’s very quiet, and conservative, in keeping with much of the New England landscape.

As I started to hike the trail around the 60 acre lake, I realized pretty quickly what they have been spending that parking money on. Barbed wire. Signs pleaded with me not to walk anywhere I pleased, later signs threatened. Herded like cattle I and the few others out that day slogged around the lake.

It took half an orbit of the lake to reach the location of his original cabin, now long one. Instead, stones and chains encircle it now like an eerie cross between a grave and a monument. A sign proclaims one of his more famous quotes. Reality is only a few paces away, a pair of train tracks for Boston’s commuter rail. Trains whiz by regularly, disturbing the solitude.

I wonder what Thoreau would have thought of this. The east-coast mentality of “conservation” had turned his pond into an attraction. I was surprised the trail was not paved all the way around, rather than just in portions. Perhaps if they raise the parking rates just a little more.

Photos

Walden Pond is located at 42.4384, -71.342.