Walking around Walden Pond

After visiting the deCordova Sculpture Park, we decided to pay our respects to the Walden Pond and see the remains of Henry David Thoreau's home there. In about 10 minutes, we drove to the Walden Pond parking lot, where I parked my Infiniti QX50 and purchased parking tickets.

We walked over to Walden Pond, across the street from the parking (too bad there were few signs on how to reach the pond). When we arrived at Walden Pond, we saw numerous people enjoying the relatively warm weather in Massachusetts, and even one brave soul was swimming in the pond.

We started on a 15-minute nature stroll to Thoreau's cabin, enjoying the peaceful surroundings, the birds chirping, and squirrels running around. Both Inna and Alex loved the peaceful surroundings and the calm waters of the pond.

 Eventually, we stumbled onto the remains of Henry David Thoreau's cabin in the woods. I was expecting to see an actual cabin (that I presumed would have been preserved from the 1850s).

In his famous treatise  - Walden: A Life in the Woods - Henry David Thoreau wrote:

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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

— Henry David Thoreau^[4]

Unfortunately, all that remained of Henry David Thoreau's cabin was an outline of where the cabin was placed. Multiple plaques were placed to commemorate and witness its original location.

After we returned to the parking lot, I spotted a replica of the Walden Park parking lot cabin and was amazed at how small and spartan it was. Could anyone live in this small, one-room house for two years? Henry David Thoreau managed to do so quite successfully.

I really enjoyed my visit to Walden Pond and hope to visit again.