Father's Day 2023
By Caryn Coyle
One of the most pleasant trails I know is the comfortable 1.7 miles of the “Healthy Heart Trail” around Concord’s Walden Pond. Thoughts of Henry David Thoreau are interspersed with those of my dad as I walk the trail. My dad would have been one hundred years old this Father’s Day. On beautiful summer days, I remember walking with my dad as he mowed our lawn in Marblehead.
The year I turned four, he cut the grass and sang to me before my backyard birthday party. It is one of my earliest memories.
Not long after I begin the Walden Pond trail, I take the path above the water, through the woods to the site of Thoreau’s cabin. An ideal environment to figure out who you are and why you exist, the remains of the cabin are outlined in nine short pillars of stone, linked with a chain. It has an awe about it. So small, yet probably all he needed. A spot of reverence where Thoreau spent his two years, two months and two days of reflection.
“The question is not what you look at, but what you see,” Thoreau wrote.
I see serenity in the trees that frame the pond with green. They smell of Christmas pine. The water is a true blue. It is so beautiful, I relax. Calmness comforts me. It is the anniversary of my father’s death and it is better to walk the trail on his anniversary, in the summer, than on his birthday, in late March, when the weather can be less than ideal.
Midway around the pond, I stop, select a boulder and sit. Someone is swimming in front of me. The only person in the pond. There are small ripples in the water. Possibly from the swimmer. Though I did see a kayaker earlier. As I watch ripples move through the water, an ant catches my eye. It is walking toward me on the stone. I stand, letting the ant have the boulder, and look up. Above me, there is not a cloud in the sky. The empyrean is light, almost white just above the trees. It builds to a very light blue that I follow until I cannot tilt my head any further back.
“Heaven is underfoot as well as over our heads,” Thoreau, again.
I don’t believe in heaven, though I think those I love are still with me. And though I am not a spiritual person, I do feel closer to my father when I am reminded of him in unexpected ways. I still think of the blue wings of a butterfly, the same shade as my father’ eyes. It landed on my white jeans when I slipped outside to the patio of the hospice moments after he died.
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.” Henry David Thoreau.
At the end of my hike, I take off my sneakers and socks. I’ve come full circle and ended up at Walden’s small beach. Next to me is a tree – a maple, perhaps? — that grows right out of the sand. I watch the water which is green where it meets the shore. Then it changes to blue, and a darker band of blue before it grows lighter as it expands toward the opposite shore.
My father liked to swim. He loved living near the water.
I wade into Walden Pond. It is something I do whenever I am near water. Fisherman’s Beach, Nahant, Devereux. I just want to sink my heels into the sand, let it wash over my toes.
I will always be a “daddy’s girl” and celebrating the person who cherished and nurtured me no longer fills me with sadness. I choose Walden Pond, on Father’s Day because it takes my breath away. I can well understand why Thoreau chose it, too.
Caryn Coyle lives in Marblehead. She edits the creative nonfiction for the Baltimore based literary journal, Loch Raven Review. Her work has appeared in more than four dozen literary publications and anthologies and she has won awards from the Maryland Writer’s Association, the New Millennium, Delmarva Review, the Missouri Writer’s Guild, the St. Louis Writer’s Guild and Pennsylvania’s Hidden River Arts. She graduated from the College of Notre Dame with a bachelor’s degree in English and the Johns Hopkins University, with a master’s degree in liberal arts.
Beautiful eulogy for your father on Father’s Day. You’ve woven your story like a tapestry, a pleasure to read. Thank you for sharing.
Congratulations, Catherine, for being the first person to pen a comment on Mass Motifs, a blog that will endure for a long time! Your prize is to join Richard Frenkel and friends as we step into the woods for another dusty adventure.
Catherine, thank you for your kind comments. I am so grateful.