Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

I went to Concord, Massachusetts on March 8th.

I had studied up a bit online, discovered the most direct and discernible route out of town to Walden Pond to be Walden Street ( a mile or so straight shot out from town along a paved road) but then had also discovered that not too long ago, the alleged path that Emerson and Thoreau frequently took—a more winding, not-always-so-discernible-path through the woods—had been marked and was also walkable.

At first I thought that, yeah, that true still-in-the-woods walk, the one those two guys blazed all those years ago, the one they really walked, sounded most likely to provide the most legitimate “transcendental” experience . . . but then I realized the irony that walking in their footsteps would be.

“Stay on Trails.”

That’s what all the signs along the path circling Walden Pond say.

That, too, pretty ironic.

Maybe.

There were also signs warning of deer ticks. I wasn’t completely ignorant when it came to deer ticks, but at the moment wasn’t all that clear on how active they might be on a day on which the temperatures snuck up just slightly above freezing. Later when I checked, I discovered that the cold doesn’t usually bother ticks, but that the snow and ice do, as they are creatures that like to crawl UP UP UP from the ground.

So those “Stay on Trails” signs, yes, were a bit ironic, and yes, they were mainly intended to keep hikers from contributing to the erosion of the pond bank (that is, creating an unwanted “trail”), but not having a complete and full understanding of how ticks operated, I thought, in this case, it was probably not a good idea to go bashing through unmarked trails, boots sinking deep down into the snow and ice.

 What Emerson says himself, too, is a bit ironic, I think. Follow your own path. Leave a trail. A trail, I assume, that someone else would follow—assumedly so that someone else wouldn’t need to.

Am I missing something?

Recently, I read Into the Wild, a non-fiction account of a young Emory University graduate who decides to take the ultimate challenge—to survive in the frigid Alaska wilderness. In that book, the author calls Thoreau “prissy and staid.”

Maybe the author was thinking how the Fitchburg railway ran along one side of Walden Pond, how Thoreau could, if he didn’t feel like working up his on fire to cook on, just walk along those tracks and be back at his mother’s house in half an hour, where he’d most likely have a hot meal ready for him.

Me, I don’t call that prissy and staid at all. I mean, the man tended his own bean field. Lots of times he caught his own fish. He read. He wrote. He built a cabin he could live in—for twenty-eight dollars and twelve and a half cents. And at least, when he did take advantage of his nearby family, he walked thirty minutes for his dinner. How many people do you know who’d walk that far for a hot meal—and that being their easiest way to get a meal?

Me, I call what Thoreau did out there at the edge of Walden Pond a reasonable experience living in and exploring and contemplating nature. If you’ve read Into the Wild or seen the movie, you know that the Emory graduate dies. He starves to death in an abandoned bus in the Alaska wilderness. I don’t mean to criticize him. I merely mean to say that if Thoreau was prissy and staid, I don’t think those are very bad things to be at all.

Nature never wears a mean appearance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

But I get it. When you get to Walden Pond you can take the trail you like to get around it. Or you can just walk across it. Walk across it whichever way suits you. Or you can ski across.

But if you’re not sure how thick the ice is, then you might want to follow in someone else’s footsteps–or someone else’s ski tracks. It’s not easy, and not necessarily necessary—or wise—to walk in fresh snow two feet deep, when the beaten path will lead you to the same place.

So make your own path when you can. Dance to your own drummer when it seems right. And when necessary, walk back to your mother’s for dinner. Don’t worry that anyone calls you prissy and staid. You’ll be doing just fine.

The site of Thoreau’s cabin sits above a cove.  A nice level bit of ground. Good view of the pond. Not far off from a good fishing spot. If you find a better place than Thoreau did to build your cabin build it there. If you think he found the best spot, build where he did.

Seems I remember in Walden, Thoreau saying that he cleared hickory and white pine to make a spot for his cabin, but as I was walking back to town through Walden Wood, along the “Emerson-Thoreau Amble” all I saw was black oak, silver birch, and pitch pine.

Things change.

But it was lovely.

A dog out for a walk came out of nowhere and almost ate me. 

Just  as I was coming out from the woods, not far from Emerson’s house, it began to snow. It snowed hard, but only for about five minutes. It was a quiet, serene snowfall. A special gift, I took it as.

Check out the look in that purple finch’s eye. He knew the snowfall was sublime.

At Emerson’s house, the day went from gray to blue in about ninety seconds. Just coincidence, you think?

Some of you know, I’m a sucker for blue skies and snow. For me, anyway, it was the perfect day to walk the streets of Concord.

And it was the perfect day to walk on to the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. To pay respects to Emerson, the rock, the giant sequoia. 

But maybe I was more touched by Henry’s tombstone. It was tiny. Like a child’s.

Is this the thought of a child?