To See or Not to See...

A Day at Thoreau's Place in the Woods

The question is not what you look at, but what you see. ~Henry David Thoreau

After a year of “isolating at home” during the Covid Pandemic, my first glimpse today of Thoreau’s little cottage in the woods at Waldon Pond confirmed him as a kindred spirit. He chose to live isolated and close to nature in order to find tranquility within and to develop a greater appreciation for the beauty of nature. He slowed down, simplified, and observed the world closely—it was all in noticing the details.

Isn’t that what many of us attempted to do in 2020? We were forced to simplify, slow down, and isolate. We took our walks alone (though we brought along our cameras). We looked closely for even the littlest bits of beauty as we struggled to find new patterns and bring comfort our disrupted daily lives away from friends and family.

Not till we are completely lost or turned around…do we begin to find ourselves. ~Henry David Thoreau

During my Pandemic Year, beginning on March 7, 2020, exactly 365+28 days ago, I wrote a daily post on Facebook and Instagram with a few photos and observations. That brief daily journal pulled me through difficult days and gave my daily walks purpose. I developed the habit of looking closely, observing even the tiniest details, and finding the beauty all around me. Those daily walks became meditations that gave my brain a break from pandemic-year anxieties and provided a worthwhile occupation—seeker of beauty and meaning. I know many others found tanquility in a similar fashion.

I took most of my near-daily pandemic-year walks along the shoreline of Rollins Lake on the edge of the little town of Colfax, California. Thoreau took his daily ambles beside streams and lakes in the woods near Concord, Massachusetts, in the mid-1800s—a time and place very different from mine. However, even centuries and miles apart, we shared the sky, the air, the water, the soil—even the flora and fauna were similar. And we shared the desire to find kinship with Nature and beauty in all things and an inner calm.

Things do not change; we change. ~Henry David Thoreau

Today’s walk in the woods around Walden Pond and along the Emerson-Thoreau Amble with Dean and Marta was wonderful. It’s Easter weekend—a traditional time to contemplate renewal. Spring is in the air—the season of rebirth and regeneration. It’s covid vaccination season, too—a real life manifestation of the symbols of Easter and spring all rolled into one joyful sense of optimism and anticipation. It is because I am several weeks past my second dose that I am free to even be here in Massachusetts with my two beloveds taking a delightful springtime stroll in Thoreau’s woods.

For much of 2020, my writing got lost in the shuffle. I didn’t seem to have enough brain cells to channel creative energy into the written word beyond my short daily journal posts. My writing muse, like a bright yellow daffodil of spring, is reemerging from her hibernation in 2021. That feels rewarding, purposeful, even joyful—renewed.

Welcome to this newsletter/website. Thank you for sharing with me.

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