For Love of Lakes

Henry’s Mirror

· · 219 · · Henry’s Mirror Waldenisnotsignificantasaplaceatall....Itissignificantonly becausethewordWaldensuggestssomethoughtsamanhadonce. Wherehehadthemreallydoesn’tmatter. RAYMOND ADAMS Noparalleltractorbodyofwaterorplacehassocaptivatedthe humanimaginationorsotaughtushowtorelatetothenaturalworld fromwhichwespring.Nowhereelseistherea...monumentofsuch breathtakingconsequence....Waldenisaninternationalshrine. JANE HOLTZ KAY At a small bridge nine miles west of Boston a minuteman fired a shot heard “round the world” in 1775. Five miles west and seventy-eight years later, Henry David Thoreau fired his own shot beside a small lake physically indistinguishable from hundreds of others sparkling in the Massachusetts landscape. Echoes of the revolutions ignited by both shots reverberate still. As Thoreau is our most famous lake-watcher, his beloved Walden Pond is surely our most famous lake. Seven hundred thousand people annually visit that body of water, offspring of a block of ice abandoned by a wasting glacier. Some come to fish, many to swim or saunter along the paths that surround it. Others come to make peace. Some come on a pilgrimage as to a holy place. I have read that Gandhi dearly wanted to visit Walden. This is my second visit. I have longed for years to measure the clarity of Thoreau’s “clear and deep green well . . . water so transparent that the bottom can easily be discerned at a depth of twenty-five or thirty feet.” Is it still so? How has time treated Henry’s beloved pond? I drop off Geri and the canoe at the boat landing on this glorious October morning and leave to park the car. I insert my ten dollar bill into the futurescapes· · 220 · · fee machine at the parking lot gate, collect the five Susan B. Anthonys that tumble out as my change, and join a mere handful of cars in the large lot. I do not imagine it is this easy when the hordes of summer visitors flood these grounds. I follow a dirt path, cross a narrow highway, and descend a wooded slope toward scattered patches of blue in a mosaic of yellow, orange, and crimson leaves, radiant in the bright sun. Asmystepsbringmenearerthewater’sedge,asuddenrushofemotion wells up within me, startling me. Is it the lake, this setting, Thoreau’s mystic that touches me so deeply? My pace slows as this powerful landscape of mind settles over me. In Walden, Thoreau writes in “The Ponds” chapter, “The scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and, though very beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, nor can it much concern one who has not long frequented it or lived by its shore.” Henry, I must vehemently disagree! I have “frequented” this lake, as you put it, only once before, fleetingly, when Geri and I brought our two children east for a squeeze-in-all-the-stops-you-can American history tour. We tarried here no more than two hours, never swam nor fished nor walked the pond’s full perimeter, then rushed off to Lexington and that famous bridge. Though I’m unable to fully explain this power of place I’m feeling, Henry, your lake clearly “concerns” me. The path on the south shore takes me to Geri and our canoe. The lake is the mirror Thoreau wrote about, reflecting “the bright tints of October.” Unusually heavy rains this autumn have delayed leaf fall several weeks. A freshly dead rainbow trout lies in the sand at the boat launch. We paddle from the landing, veer west, and move slowly along the shore in a canoeist’s version of an idle stroll, aquatic sauntering. A silent motor pushes a lone fisherman in his blue boat slowly down the middle of the lake. A trout rises, dimpling the glass surface. The morning sun emblazons the west shore, and the bright crimson of a brash young maple, like an arboreal chanticleer, shouts a silent HUZZAH at the prospects of the day. Though Walden is not large, sixty acres in all, numerous small coves sculpt an engaging shoreline. Only traffic sounds from the highway and a distant drone of an industrial machine, white noise, blur the quiet. The earthy smell of the woods, of dry leaves and leaf mold and humus overwhelms any smell of lake. · · 221 · · We enter Little Cove as the call of a train, invisible behind a wooded point, grows louder. The clackity-clack of its wheels reach the far end of the lake, now drops in pitch, and fades to the west. The Fitchburg line has passed this way since Thoreau’s day, when farmers set their clocks by the train whistle. Another train. Not ten minutes have passed since the last. This time...