Walden Pond: Visiting Henry David Thoreau

Walden Pond looks like the postcard version of New England, though the first thing I notice is the sound. A semi-trailer growls past, a train snaps by the lake, and a plane cuts the sky. That friction is exactly why I wanted to record this 300th-episode pilgrimage from one of the most iconic places in conservation history, where Henry David Thoreau lived for two years and turned detailed journals into Walden, the renowned masterpiece of nature writing, and cultural and self-examination.

I walk the shoreline, having started at the Walden Center, and follow the trail toward the replica cabin and on to its original site. Along the way I sit with what’s been restored and what’s still under pressure: crystal-clear water filtered through sands and soils, protected land surrounded by encroaching development, and the ongoing question of whether our technologies deliver more than they take. Standing at the stones and reading Thoreau’s “live deliberately” passage where it actually happened makes the idea feel a lot more visceral.

Thoreau’s civil disobedience writing also echoes through Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. And we learn the surprising history of Walden Pond’s stewardship, including an old amusement park that once sprung up alongside these waters. I end up alone at dusk, with night falling and moon rising. 

In celebration of the 300th episode, recorded the day after visiting Rachel Carson’s place in what became ep293. I've so looked forward to sharing this with you. The spirit of this place is really something. I hope you enjoy it.

With huge thanks for listening and supporting the podcast through its first 300 episodes!

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 10 September 2024.

Our visit to Aldo Leopold’s shack for ep218.

See some photos on the episode web page, and for more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener below.

Music: Working the Fields, by Falconer (from Artlist).

Transcript

The 300th Episode Gratitude

Walking In Thoreau’s Footsteps

AJ 0:05

G'day there, Anthony James here for The RegenNarration. Just pulled up at Walden Pond, the famous pond where Henry David Thoreau set up his cabin in 1845 and subsequently wrote Walden, another tome that changed the world and interestingly inspired Rachel Carson and figures like Gandhi and Martin Luther King with this civil disobedience tome that was the other really famous one. But it's funny to turn up here. I mean, while it's beautiful and it's forested protected, 300 acres of protected land, it's loud and busy. It sort of reminds me of what he was getting away from. The uh rapidly industrializing state of Massachusetts and nearby town of Concord. I almost didn't wait for the semi-trailer to just pass by, but uh but I did because it sounds terrible, but it did feel a bit indicative. On the other hand, there's lots of people actually swimming, it's a beautiful autumn day, fall day of I don't know, 25 degrees or something, and it's pretty popular for that, and we'll probably do the same to tell you the truth. There is a Walden Center which I just came out of, which is small but beautiful. Some really interesting artifacts, and of course, more on his life. I've come up as I approach the lake to the first sign. It says you are standing in one of the most iconic places in conservation history. Some consider Walden Pond to be the birthplace of the environmental movement because it is forever linked to the writings of transcendentalist and author Henry David Thoreau. Walden Pond is best known as the site where Thoreau lived for just over two years, in fact, two years, two months, and two days, and where he pursued a life of simplicity, independence, and self-reflection. His experience in detailed journaling became the basis of his most famous book, Walden. It remains an American masterpiece, nature writing and self-examination, read and treasured throughout the world. Right, let's head to the pond. G'day everyone. Welcome to the 300th episode. Amazing to think. Firstly, then thank you. Huge thank you for listening, for supporting, for what's going on 10 years now. I'm so grateful that this humble offering of a podcast, a huge crash course for your host, continues to be of value. It's all made possible by generous listeners like you. So to celebrate the 300th, yep, a special episode that I've been so looking forward to sharing from Walden Pond. Henry David Thoreau's influential 1854 book written here is certainly one I reveled in. And this visit also served as a passing of that revelry on to young Yeshi. Hope you enjoy it. Let's go. Oh wow, Yeshi boy. This is very special.

Speaker 3:27

Exactly.

AJ 3:28

Do you want to let me record a bit about our approach? Alright. Heading down towards the water now. Again, another poignant moment a bit like when we were at Leopold's Shack in Wisconsin and Carson's cottage in Maine. You come down to the lake and it's one of the beaches that greets you straight up. Which I think is also where a boat ramp is, not further too far around, but we'll cut right, hey? Oh you can't. Oh yes you can. There we go. Yep, we'll cut right to towards where there's a replica shack and the site of where he did live between 1845 and 1847. There's another beach out there too, which might be the one we use. Wow, it is crystal clear. Had read about that. So well filtrated through the particular sands apparently, and of course, yeah, 300 acres of protected land. Around it is a highway and and the old train line that was started about the time he came out. So yeah, plenty of noise in industry about. I believe there's a private jet airport expansion on the on the uh agenda around here too, which they're trying to, well some people certainly are trying to stop for what that would do to the ambience on uh as close to a sacred space as any in this country now. So Thoreau was said to have walked for hours every day, which means we are right in the footsteps, and of course in the footsteps of First Nations for 12,000 years before that. It's strange to be in this place which is so beautiful and protected and important and be right by a road that is so loud. But I guess yeah, that does set up appropriate context in some ways for what he was trying to point out that quite often the technologies we develop could use a critical eye, let's say, as to whether they deliver more than they take. So passing the beach now. Fair to say it's not a place we would call a beach in Australia, but there's a space by the water.

Speaker 6:05

There's it's really narrow.

AJ 6:07

Yeah, really.

Speaker 6:08

Yeah, look, that's it. Yeah, that's it.

AJ 6:12

That's pretty beautiful water though, isn't it?

Speaker 6:14

Yeah, back there it is.

AJ 6:18

Well, we've just lingered for a couple of hours on the beach as the wind has peeled away some of the noise, too. I mean you'll still hear an aeroplane overhead, and most people have left a few swimmers there still. Uh the sun's probably an hour away from sunset. It feels somehow a little meditative now, like you can imagine. Henry felt often. Though he observed plenty of traffic coming through too, even ice exporters that would come in when it fully iced up, carve ice out and ship it off on the train. Again, hard for an Aussie to imagine. We're just moving around now to where the cabin used to be in the 1840s.

Speaker 7:18

Oh, that's a beautiful side. Wow. Just behind a bush to the site of the Rose Hut.

Thoreau’s Life And Scientific Care

The Cabin Site And Famous Quote

Preservation History And Odd Detours

Civil Disobedience Echoes To Gandhi

Ruts We Make And Living Well

Moonrise Reflections And Farewell

AJ 7:31

And that is right by this crystal clear lake. I think that's the train over to the west side of the lake. I think it's a commuter line now. So short, sharp, very loud bursts. As I walk along here, I'm reminded of some of the pictures I saw back at the center. Wow, that water is beautiful. That's quickly down to six, ten feet here. You can see right to the bottom. That um I think I pictured from the 1950s with a caption that had been loved to death. Barren banks, cars up to the edge, the beginning of the car era. Uh, but you wouldn't know to look at it now, they moved the car park out and it's fully restored. I mean, when I say fully restored, they've still got protected areas there working at aware around those beaches where people congregate, but um yeah, it looks beautiful. So about halfway along the east side now, and occasionally the fence line breaks protecting the banks, and you can go down on rock steps to swim. And this is getting towards the deep end of the pond. I mean, in Australian terms, it's a lake. Uh, it's getting to the deep end. Apparently, it's one of the deepest, if not the deepest, in the country. It goes to 30 meters or something at where Henry had set up, and he indeed was the first person known to have measured it. Amongst his varied valuable scientific contributions because his observations and his recordings were so meticulous. Coming into the far northeast pocket now, it's sort of an inlet that comes off the major body of the lake, and the site of the hut cabin was up here, I believe. It's getting quieter coming away from the busy end these days and the remaining swimmers. Still the distance down to the highway. Bug starting about this end of the lake as we get into really shrouded, quiet, layered fallen leaves on the ground already. And glassy, glassy water. Wow. It's still amazing to me that Henry was 28 when he came out here. He was there he goes a chipmunk at the tree. He was only 44 when he died. So approaching the house site now, a little sign on the tree tells me. Right now we've got a boardwalk that crosses sort of a mud flat area to a smaller pond over to my right, which he has described as icing over first from memory and some writing. I just remember reading Walden by Port Philip Bay in Melbourne, many a sunny afternoon, and imagining being here. Well, not even being here, just trying to imagine here, and now to find myself here. So he died at aged 44. So he he's here 1847 to 18, 1845 to 1847 as a 28-year-old to 30 years of age, writes the or posts the book published in 1854, 1862, he dies of tuberculosis, as did I think two of his three siblings. Read that in wiki, so taking that at face value. I think one of those sisters was very young anyway, maybe 30 something, and his brother, who he did have a teaching academy with having been disenchanted by what was being taught in schools, I think he was 27 and died in 1842, which is part of why Henry came out here. Also, he could because his mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, owned this patch of land and permitted Henry to come out here and build a little shack and stay for a while. Then the Emerson, along with a couple of other families, bestowed this to the state. And here it is today, preserving the legacy. A little very little uh core flute sign. Thoreau's placement of the house was deliberate and offered views of the cove and pond. Nearby Wyman's Meadow displayed the changing seasons and inspiration for his journaling. There's a quote here from 1857. These are from his journals, these sorts of quotes. Celebrate not the Garden of Eden, but your own. Okay. Almost at the house site. Feels super quiet up here. I can appreciate the choice he made. For those who don't know, Emerson is an inspiration himself. Well, he could um feast out on his writings for a while too. It's just interesting to think how much Thoreau's became so piercing and resonant in our culture. And to think again, um Rachel Carson died at 56, just got silent spring off, Aldo Leopold just got Zancani Almanac off just before he died, and still pretty young, I think it was 61. And Henry David Thoreau has changed the world by 44. Okay, so I've come to the little trail up to the house site. It comes off the lake. They've come up a little from that boardwalk and now coming a little higher and a little back from the water. It's a substantial enough hill, and this is the quote of all quotes on a wooden board with his actual signature at the bottom of it, beautifully done, in front of a pile of stones that people have left, I believe, since the 19th century in honour of what was born of this place through him. It reads, I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Henry D. Thoreau. It's funny when I was just reading that I felt like someone was behind me. I was hearing footsteps. Not just that, my little boy's now. I'm having a moment. There's no one here. Hmm. At the house site now. Site of Thoreau's cabin, etched in one of the concrete pylons that takes the shape of what I guess was the house. Under it it says, discovered November 11, 1945, by Roland Wells Robbins. Sign next to it reads, Though he's internationally famous today, in his lifetime Thoreau was best known locally. Upon his departure from Walden in 1847, the house was sold and moved off the property. There's a little picture of the cabin, which was the original title page of Walden. It's a print of the house based on a drawing by Thoreau's sister, Sophia, though in reality there were fewer trees around the house in the 1840s. It's a beautiful depiction, even if some license was taken. Roland Wells Robbins, an avocational archaeologist, dug for three months in 1945. The centennial of Thoreau's moved to Walden and unearthed remnants that revealed the exact location of the house. Good job, Rowland. Walking in the would-be front door now. What is it, Yesha? Oh, he's a woodpecker. Looking up at a woodpecker in the upper reaches of the trees around us, there it goes. So at the back end of the cabin space, it says beneath these stones lies the chimney foundation of Thoreau's cabin, 1845 to 1847. One single room. And out the back, another concrete plaque in the earth. Reads Site of Woodshed. Another smaller room. Standing at the door looking back to the lake. Just imagining. Just continuing up the trail, a little further up the hill, the back of the cabin, following the footsteps, no doubt. So it was 1922 that the Hayward, Emerson, and Forbes families granted the lands of Walden Pond to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Interestingly, the centre we were in earlier, on the other side of the lake, or the pond, was made largely of a red oak that starts out as a sapling in 1835, they say. Just before Henry was here, or as he graduated from Harvard and begins his friendship with Emerson. Then in 2015, after 178 years, this tree is cut down for the center. Here it finds new purpose as a part of this building, and in interpreting Thoreau's legacy, and yes, they've got all the sustainability credentials in that building with a beautiful timber finish. And they've got that history all etched into a cut of that tree, much like they did at the Leopold Centre, too. Beautifully done. So apparently, the stipulation amongst the gift of 80 acres of this area by those families in 1922 was that the pond must preserve the Walden of Emerson and Thoreau. Funnily enough, I didn't know this, there was an amusement park at one stage in the 1870s. Looks like the entrance was by the railway line, to be predictable enough. The park included a dance hall, athletic field, and a track for bicycle and running races. The sounds of bands and cheering crowds echoed across the pond until 1902, when a devastating fire destroyed the park. It was not rebuilt. Does seem quite funny that an amusement park was put here soon after Henry's death. That uh getting back to the essentials of life. The message was not heeded that closely yet. Not that there's anything wrong with some amusement in itself. Then you might wonder at the spirit of a place that builds over those decades, having its way back to the essentials. Back at the cabin site. Imagining the cabin here, walking back inside, dust comes upon us and the action dies down. There's still a bit of industrial noise around us. There probably was back then with the steam trains. I'm taking a moment here to remember one of the signs back in the center that had Rachel Carson saying these words. By reading a few pages before turning out the light. Rohandes Gandhi said Thoreau was a great writer, philosopher, poet, and withal a most practical man. That is, he taught nothing he was not prepared to practice in himself. At the time of the abolition of slavery movement, he wrote his famous essay on the duty of civil disobedience. He went to jail for the sake of his principles and suffering humanity. His essay has therefore been sanctified by suffering. Moreover, it is written for all time. Its incisive logic is insurmountable. And that reminds me of my old mentor, Frank Fisher. Became legendary for walking the talk, so to speak, but it was so much more than that. I learned a lot. And indeed, in studying Gandhi about the same time, I think I travelled to Guatemala with Gandhi's autobiography, Experiments in Truth, I think that was called from memory. Then Martin Luther King, who again dies at 38, 39, says this of Thoreau. During my early college days, I read Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience for the first time. Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times. I became convinced then that non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across as Henry David Thoreau, MLK Jr. So I imagine Thoreau here journaling that became the basis of the book. In much the quiet as we have right now back out the door. Again, can't help but think what one person's experiment and passion and guts flying in the face of sweeping industrial conventional wisdom at the time can sum to. I remember him talking about this walk back down of the lake too, that it didn't take long, maybe even a week, before he'd trodden a well-worn path and he marvelled at how we can dig ruts for ourselves if we tread the same path for long enough. Something to be deliberate and conscious in, as he would say. A little track that cuts down from it down to the shore. I imagine this was a very, very common walk from the heart. And here's a little opening. And while he wrote that one September he was here, the first week, fall had well and truly set in and the colours were alive. So it didn't feel much like winter was coming on this occasion, but it's still a treat and just a hint of colour about walking back on the lower trail now. Almost hard to leave. Feel like I could do it all over again. Get some people out here like Henry did, build a shack together and stay for a while. Any wonder he chose that spot. Okay, for us it's a tent. I'm just reflecting now on these two days. Little squirrel looking me square in the eyes. How full of character. Now it's of height, but still looking me square in the eyes. Hey little fella. Hey, oh a wink, thank you. See ya. Yeah, reflecting on two consecutive days, one spent with Rachel Carson up in Maine, and then one spent with Yeah, I know it's sad to say goodbye, isn't it? See ya. And one spent with Henry here, metaphorically speaking. But it's funny, you know, having spent that time up around Rachel's places yesterday, uh, and having spent time with you know legends who are alive today in their places, you come away really feeling their presence, and I felt that yesterday. It wasn't hard to imagine actually having been with her when you seek to, I guess, inhabit someone's world as authentically as you can and portray it, I suppose. And today it's it feels a bit more of a stretch, such a different time. But somehow, I was 28 when I headed to Guatemala. There are points of relating, meeting an old mentor that was figurative. There are points of relating, and yeah, certainly being inspired to live or try to live the principles. So maybe the golfing time isn't that big after all. Where I stand right now, the moonrise reflects off the still waters. It is a veritable feast for the eyes here right now. I wonder how he felt leaving after two years, two months, two days. I guess he can feel ready. I wondered if I'd leave Guatemala until about two years in. What that's worth. But I guess in some ways, you never really leave. It certainly never leaves you. And I'm feeling that in spades right now. Well, on that note, thanks for joining me on this little pilgrimage. I hope you enjoyed sharing in it and we'll see you next week.