. . . where you are.

On my library visits, I have been making it a point to bring home a book or two of poetry. Poets I know and poets I don’t find their way into my arms as I attempt to broaden my poetic horizons. Most recently, New and Selected Poems, by Mary Oliver, has been sitting at my side. I bookmarked (with a real book mark) The Black Walnut Tree.  I’ve read this poem a few times over, thinking about our own trees here on the Cutoff and our walnut harvest last fall.

I was so sorry to hear through Nan’s blog, Letters from a Hill Farm, that Mary Oliver has cancelled all speaking engagements. She has taken ill.  As I thumbed through the book this morning, another poem presented itself to me. Poems have a way of doing that, don’t they? They sit and wait until just the right time to introduce themselves. I thought it might be fitting way to honor Mary Oliver by posting it today.

The picture is ours, one of hundreds taken at Walden Pond, but the message I hear from the poem is a simple one. As simple as the idea of Walden. It is wherever you are.

Going to Walden
Mary Oliver

It isn’t very far as highways lie.
I might be back by nightfall, having seen
The rough pines, and the stones, and the clear water
Friends argue that I might be wiser for it.
They do not hear that far-off Yankee whisper:
How dull we grow from hurrying here and there!

Many have gone, and think me half a fool
To miss a day away in the cool country.
Maybe.  But in a book I read and cherish,
Going to Walden is not so easy a thing
As a green visit.   It is the slow and difficult
Trick of living, and finding it where you are.

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Men of Concord

Prize Farmer

December 28, 1853. E. W—–, who got the premium on farms this year, keeps twenty-eight cows, which are milked before breakfast, or 6 o’clock, his hired men rising at 4:30 A.M.; but he gives them none of the milk in their coffee.

 Men of Concord, by Henry D. Thoreau. F. H. Allen: Editor. N. C. Wyeth, Illustrator. Page 110.

With twenty minutes to spare before my luncheon engagement,  I darted into the Goodwill Store a few doors down. With only twenty minutes, I knew I couldn’t get into too much trouble. I also knew I would have time for only one section, so, I headed over to my first choice, the book section.

A quick glance at the shelves indicated some fine books had been brought in since my last visit. Paperbacks and novels, some newer editions, some with the distinctive covers of older issues, all in good condition.

There, with its neat little spine facing me, was the title, Men of Concord and one surname, Thoreau. As I ever-so-gently slid it off of the shelf, the wonderful cover greeted me. The words upon its pages taken from the journal of Henry David Thoreau. The magnificent illustrations from an admirer of Thoreau. N. C. Wyeth.

You may remember my telling of our autumn sojourn a few years ago to Massachusetts and Walden Pond, which I wrote about here. It was a wonderful trip, made even more so by an afternoon lunch on Walden Pond and a walk through the woods that Thoreau wrote so famously about in Walden.

You may also remember my appreciation for the artwork of N. C. Wyeth, especially in his illustrations of a favorite childhood book, The Yearling, which I wrote about here.

To find the words from Thoreau’s journals so evocatively illustrated by N. C. Wyeth was a blissful encounter indeed.

Walking out of the store, I felt good at how little trouble I did get into, hugging my book, in pristine condition, at a whopping price of $1.95!

I thought I did pretty well for myself in such a short time.

Plates from the front of the book. Please click the pictures for a better look, especially the cover above.

Thoreau and Miss Emerson

Bronson Alcott at the Granary Cemetery in Boston

Four boys and a horse.

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On Walden

Just sitting here. Enjoying the quiet. Reflecting.

A few years ago, we spent a day on Walden Pond. It was a clear and crisp autumn day and one I will always remember. We arrived early, having heard that while there was plenty of room around Walden, the parking lot was small. Intentionally small, I think, to control the number of people visiting Walden Pond. We came with sandwiches and such from a deli in Concord and sat on steps, eating, watching a few canoeists, swimmers braving the chilly water, an elderly couple sitting in camp chairs reading, an artist sketching  . . .  people, living on purpose.

From the moment I first read Thoreau’s Walden in American Literature class in high school, I wanted to see Walden Pond. I always knew I would love it just not how much I would. Have you ever had that experience? Thoreau’s quote says it best:

If one advances confidently in the direction of one’s dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Did you know that Frederick Tudor, The Ice King, devised a way to harvest ice and became a very wealthy man? Ice was taken from Walden Pond to use aboard ships to keep food cold on the journey to the tropics. Frederick Tudor was the great grandfather of Tasha Tudor, an illustrator whose books and gardens and life I so admire.

Do you remember the scene in the Winona Ryder film version of Little Women where Jo and Laurie go ice skating and Amy falls through the ice in the pond? That was a depiction of Walden Pond. Orchard House, where Alcott wrote Little Women, is within walking distance from the pond.

The Alcotts were friends of Thoreau and there is speculation that Louisa May had at least a girlhood crush on him. They, along with Emerson and Hawthorne and others, are all buried in the same cemetery, near each other, in a section noted for the number of writers buried there.

Ah, but my thoughts wander today, like the path at Walden, when I meant to wax poetic and dream awhile of advancing confidently toward my dreams.

 

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