We Can't All Live at Walden Pond

Photo from Walden Pond State Reservation

We can't all live at Walden Pond, yet we find glimpses of it in the daily living. Riding a motorcycle at night when the world is at its height of stillness. Gathering up pieces of fall from backyard trees for the sheer beauty of doing it. Dipping your foot in a body of water no matter how small. Knowing when you meet the eyes of those little companions whose footfalls shadow yours, whether feline or canine, that they see the world through senses we may not know, like the woodland creatures do.
Moments that take you there, if only briefly, to the pond, to what it must be like to actually hear nature when you sit outside, not nature backed up by airplanes buzzing by, or neighbors mowing overgrown lawns. These glimpses of simplicity and just being that come our way are telling us something. They speak of what's real and what's important. They pierce to the soul, healing frazzled spirits desperate for the pond and what it represents.

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 that I had not lived.

Henry David Thoreau