Walden

~~this post is dedicated to two of my fellow Walden Pond lovers... Chocolate Girl {who will visit one day...} and Kristen, who found my blog last year when I wrote about a trip to Walden Pond. Ladies, I thought of you both today as I walked around the pond. And I smiled, and even got a little teary for the fact that we share a love for such an incredible place. All my love...~~

There are certain places that ooze creativity, peace, and give you a sense of purpose. Walden Pond... oh yes... Walden Pond is one of them.

We ventured out, the four of us, dawning rain coats and long pants. We navigated tree branches and roots, pine cones, and other walkers.

Paige and Lucas had to turn around to go back to the car at one point, but Fynn and I kept going. He talked. I listened. I talked. I think he listened...

I tried to tell him about the magic of Walden. How a man lived there and wrote about nature and life and simplicity.

But the highlight of the walk for Fynn was not hearing about Thoreau or seeing the site where a little shack stood, looking out through the woods over the water. From last year, Fynn remember that somewhere in the woods were train tracks. And when we found them, it poured. But he was ecstatic, so we stayed for a few minutes.

Fynn told me about some "time tunnel" thing that occasionally trains go through, and what happens when you go through them. You go back in time, but you're the same, the places are just a little different.

So he says.

And so it was. We walked along the tracks for a bit, and then stepped through our own time tunnel of pine and birch trees.

It smelled like the beginning of fall, the last breaths of summer. A glimmer of red in the trees, a trace of camp fire in the air.

As I wrote last year, you can just feel sometime so incredible at Walden Pond. Maybe it's the awe of being in the same presence as such a beautiful writer. Seeing what he saw. Walking where he walked.

You all know my heart is at the beach, almost always. But the woods are a magical {for lack of a better word... maybe ethereal?} place full of quiet moments. A three year old grabbing his mamas hand, soaked with raindrops but still a warm embrace. Yes, magical.

Fynn and I made it around the entire pond. Me and my little trooper. We met up with Lucas and Paige and heard about their adventures.

We left soaked, dripping from head to foot. Cold and hungry and tired. But so very full.

"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 that I had not lived."

~Henry David Thoreau