“If man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.  Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.  Thoreau

 

We travelled up to Concord, MA to see what we were calling the ‘Dead Poet Society’—Such a small town in Massachusetts hosted the lives of Thoreau, Emerson, Alcott, and Hawthorne.  Our first stop on our journey was to Walden Pond. 

 

Walden Pond is the place where Thoreau lived for two years as an ‘experiment’ to see what it would be like to live ‘deliberately’ with only the essential facts of life. 

During this time he wrote “Life in the Woods”.  When Thoreau left the woods, he took his house down so as not to interfere with the woods.  The exact location was only discovered a couple of years back by an amateur archeologist who found the location based on the book he wrote while in those woods.  All he could find was the chimney hearth and the rocks used to make the chimney.  Many people, including mine, enjoyed making standing rock sculptures at the site.  Back near the welcome center is a replica house, which you can see the kids standing in front of.  It was one room with a bed, a fire stove and a desk.  Behind it was another small structure he kept his wood store in.  Another treasure we found in the woods was the lady slippers here and there in the woods. 

  “I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

Thoreau

 

So inspirational is this period of writing during Thoreau’s life, the media company “Walden Media” is named after this pond.  They have produced such movies as Holes, and Narnia.  This is their symbol—a rock, skipping across the pond!