Walden Pond
I had an interesting conversation about Bob with my mother last night; Kate, Karen and her mother in the car and everything. I told my mother I didn't have a father because that man had brought only pain. I told her that in my eyes he negatively affected 3 lives, if not 4. Perhaps I will write him a letter...
I went to Walden Pond yesturday and let me just say that it was not at all what I expected. I wanted it to be a wonderful transcendental moment, and it wasn't. Walden has been turned into a tourist attraction. I wanted to experience it as Thoreau had experienced it, but as I sat by the pond, trying to listen to the water lapping against the shore, all I could hear were the distant cars rushing by on the nearby road; the people talking and children screaming; the train rushing by on the tracks, slithering in and out of the trees on the other side of the pond. I could not see the beauty because I could not overlook the confining green fences entrapping hikers on the fixed path. How ironic that people visiting Thoreau's home would "follow the beaten path" and not "walk to the beat of their own drummer", so to speak. My mother told me that the house was no longer there, and "reconstruction" was too flattering a word for what they did to his house. She said there were pillars with ropes and the base of a fireplace. Perhaps I AM being negative, call it what you will, but I was let down. I went for a beautiful transcendental experience and a peaceful walk in the woods, and got a tourist area instead. Kate said I was being negative, and I suppose that is the difference between us; She could see everything there was, and all I could see what wasn't.