Walden Pond

 

The weather was perfect as Rick and I walked toward the ruins of Henry David Thoreau's cabin in the Walden Pond woods. We didn't need to add clothes for warmth or remove them to cool off.

Although most of the leaves were still green, the trees were dotted with reds and yellows. A few floated to the ground. 

That day, a plethora of chipmunks seemed to be out and about, watching us, the only people there that weekday.

We were on a memory tour as newlyweds showing each other our childhoods.

Even as an ex-American, I can never remove my New England Yankee roots. The thoughts of Thoreau, Longfellow and Emerson, the Transcendentalist belief of the beauty of nature and goodness of people was inherent in my childhood even if my family would never have known to call it that. I only identified it after certain university lit classes.

It's a term I seldom think of, but I feel it on my walks through my Swiss village when the fields run into the forest and the Alps provide a backdrop to our lives. It doesn't matter if the crop is sunflowers or grapes. 

It is the sign that asks people to leash their dogs to not disturb the newly-born fawns. It can be the smell of the trees or the newly turned earth. If the temperature is not as perfect as it was on that September day at Walden Pond, its cold or warmth is a message of being alive.

The contrast of the natural beauty to the horrors of war, political upset and hatred is soul-saving. 

That day, Rick and I returned to the visitor's center. We had read the sign. We went into the model of the original cabin.

At the recreation of Thoreau's cabin, I thought of my Nest in the south of France, a studio in the grenier of a 400 year old building. I wasn't copying Thoreau consciously and it doesn't matter if the desire to live simply comes from my DNA or my environment.

We bought Rick a T-shirt that reads "simplify, simplify, simplify" a bit of consumerism contrary to the message but a memory joy of that day each time he puts it on.