Walden

I never updated after our vacation.

We visited Massachusetts. We didn’t want to do Boston. That’s a trip in itself. Instead, we visited Walden Pond, where Henry David Thoreau wrote Walden. We listened to some of the audio book on the way up to New England. Meagan didn’t remember much of it, so it was a reintroduction for her.

“It’s amazing how much all this still applies today,” she said.

We decided to check out the pond on Wednesday, the day after we arrived, July 12. Not being up on my Thoreau, I didn’t realize it was his birthday. When the thunder threatened to kick us out of the lake, and then finally did, the park rangers invited us to celebrate his birthday party with them.

We decided to check it out. Lo and behold, it wasn’t just a normal birthday – it was his 200th birthday, the bicentennial. How cool is that!

We listened to the flutists play some music. Mr. Thoreau used to play the same music in his home to entertain himself. Not sure he played the flute, though.

Oh, and backing up, we loved the pond. It was all peaceful and not amazing. Just a normal lake with normal people swimming on a normal day, 200 years after the birth of a normal man who ended up writing a book about living a simple but anything but normal life.