Thirteen Ways I Love Walden Pond
By Carl Carlsen
Inspired by “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by poet Wallace Stevens
who uses the blackbird to describe the relations between humankind, nature and emotions.
I.
I love the water. There’s a reason open-water swimmers flock to Walden Pond, and it’s the water. According to Henry David Thoreau, famously in residence at Walden from July 1845 until September 1847, and as described in Walden, his classic memoir of that “experiment in living,” the water is extraordinary for its color and clarity. Thoreau can’t quite decide whether the water’s blue or green, but even more unique than its color is its clarity, which I take to mean its purity. Walden’s water is constantly refreshed by underground springs emerging from its bottom, and when you’re swimming at Walden, you can tell when you pass over one because the water will become colder. It’s as though you’re being touched by a force from not only beneath the surface, but from beneath the floor of the pond, inside the earth.
II.
I love the connection of Walden Pond to Thoreau. Is there any body of water, any kettle pond in our state, more closely associated with a classic American writer than Walden is with Thoreau? I’m guessing not. When I swim at Walden, I feel like I’m swimming in Thoreau’s bloodstream, and I think not only of the underground springs as a circulatory system of a sort, but also of “Fantastic Voyage,” that 1960s movie where in order to save a patient, a medical team and the submarine they are in are miniaturized and injected into an artery leading to the heart. When I’m swimming at Walden, I sometimes imagine I’m in that submarine heading towards Thoreau’s heart.
III.
I love Thoreau’s philosophy of life. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Instead of having an overabundance of stuff, have only what you need. Be like Walt Whitman and only have a bowl, a plate and a few utensils for kitchenware. Instead of spending a lot of time keeping track of your stuff, spend your time on track in direct contact with Nature. Wearing only a bathing suit, become immersed in Walden’s water, and later, back home, feel cleansed, renewed, feel the transformative power of swimming in Walden.
IV.
I love it when the yellow pollen is on the water’s surface. This happens in May, when the swimming season starts. You know this time of year because the pollen coats your car. You may think of it as a nuisance, but at Walden, to me, the yellow pollen gathering on the pond’s surface near the main beach is beautiful. The pollen produces swirls of bright yellow amidst the darker water, and it is an ever changing artwork. I love to stand in the middle of it all, marvel that I’m alone and, having this phenomenon all to myself, I appreciate every moment, every swirl during the, for me, too short two-week yellow pollen season. In my reverie, I’m reminded of the swirls of color provided by light shows at rock concerts in the Sixties – colored ink in a basin projected onto a screen behind the band. A technician puts a finger in the basin, twirls it around and viola! – the light show. Standing hip-deep in Walden, I do the same with my hand and enjoy my own pollen-driven light show.
V.
I love to see students walking around the pond to the site of Thoreau’s cabin. Sometimes I see a young person reading Walden and ask, “What’s your favorite nugget from the book?” Thoreau’s style is rambling, with lots of associative leaps, and within the fabric of the text are nuggets, short passages that have become quotable and well-known. “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 I had not lived. . . I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” When I ask, “What’s your favorite passage?,” I get a variety of answers. But my rejoinder never varies. “The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.”
VI.
I love all the cairns at Walden. Cairns are towers of rocks piled one on the other in what is on one hand a seemingly random way, but on the other is an arrangement that is so well-balanced the cairns won’t topple. People build cairns along the shore and on the beaches of Walden, and it’s always a pleasure to discover a newly constructed one. There are also cairns in the water, large rock piles featuring foundational stones so big you wonder how on earth they got there. The cairns in the water seem like permanent installations, and I think of two in particular at the far end of the pond. Of course, the biggest cairn at Walden is next to the site of Thoreau’s cabin. It is huge, and it seems each visitor has added a rock to the pile.
The photo of cairns at Walden Pond is by Caryn Coyle.
Thirteen Ways I Love Walden Pond will be continued in a later edition.