{"id":308,"date":"2016-03-26T19:27:12","date_gmt":"2016-03-27T02:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mytruths.ca\/?p=308"},"modified":"2016-03-26T19:27:12","modified_gmt":"2016-03-27T02:27:12","slug":"remembering-walden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mytruths.ca\/?p=308","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Walden"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remembering Walden<\/h1>\n

\"Sooke<\/a>I\u2019ve long been an admirer of Henry David Thoreau.\u00a0 One of the keenest observers of the natural world ever to put pen to paper, Thoreau has a great deal to teach us about our relationships \u2013 with nature, with one another, and with ourselves.<\/p>\n

I first became immersed in Thoreau\u2019s writings many moons ago when I found myself working for a year in the Library of the Pacific Biological Station in Nanaimo.\u00a0 (Yes, this was back when our Federal Government still respected scientific work and its accumulated knowledge held, supposedly in good-keeping, in government-owned science libraries around the country).\u00a0 I had a year-long contract to compile a comprehensive bibliography on salmonids (salmon and trout and related species).\u00a0 The idea was to create the first ever computerized database of scientific information detailing everything that had ever been written on salmonids.\u00a0 It involved locating and gathering materials from libraries and researchers all around the world, assessing the material for its content, and then coding the information on to large computer input forms, the kind with hundreds of tiny little squares that the information had to be written into, one letter at a time, so it could then be keypunched and eventually stored into a huge mainframe computer that took up an entire room.\u00a0 Yes these were the early days of computers (mid 1970\u2019s) \u2013 how much we\u2019ve forgotten what life was like before the internet.\u00a0 As you can imagine, it was tedious and often mind-numbing work, but which, if it was to have any value at all, had to be done diligently and accurately and painstakingly.\u00a0 At times, it made my brain hurt.<\/p>\n

Back to Thoreau.\u00a0 It so happened that my desk, in the back corner of the library, was located right next to one of those old, dark, glass-fronted library cabinets that no-one ever dared to open.\u00a0 This one contained part of the library\u2019s \u201cspecial collection\u201d of ancient, rare and special-edition books, and on the top shelf were two huge volumes of Thoreau\u2019s Journals.\u00a0 Almost 2 feet tall, a foot and a half wide, and at least 4 inches deep, these massive tomes were old and dusty and creaky \u2013 it seemed like they hadn\u2019t been opened for decades \u2013 and they positively exuded the promise of some great insights and secrets.<\/p>\n

And so, whenever the tedium of writing letters into little squares got the better of me, I would pull out Thoreau\u2019s Journals and read through random passages.\u00a0 A couple of things came to light as I read.\u00a0 The first, that there is also a lot of tedium in someone\u2019s journals \u2013 not every thought on every day is of lasting value.\u00a0 Thoreau, in his meticulous chronicling, had an irresistible desire to count things like the number of nails it took to build his cabin, and to account for every single penny he spent.\u00a0 Interesting to him, maybe.\u00a0 But beyond that, his attention to detail also focused on the world around him and he recorded the ever-changing moments with reverence and an intimacy that could only come from a true and abiding connection with nature.\u00a0 Emerging from those pages was an image of a man very much at peace with himself and his relationship with the world, even though he questioned everything; it was a testament to the value of personal experience, curiosity and intellectual rigor in providing a solid foundation for a good life.\u00a0 His words had a profound effect on me, and have stayed with me ever since.<\/p>\n

Many years later, on a family vacation to New England, we made a point of visiting Concord and, in particular, Walden Pond.\u00a0 The pond and the surrounding woods had been owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau\u2019s friend and mentor, and were subsequently donated to the state by Emerson\u2019s family.\u00a0 By the time we visited it was a dedicated National Historic Site, and a State Park \u2013 and, as such, had been somewhat sanitized, as many State Parks are, in order to manage the volume of visitors.<\/p>\n

Thoreau\u2019s cabin was, of course, long gone, replaced with a replica (not on the original cabin site). There was also a statue of Thoreau (a bit tacky for my liking) and a very crowded swimming area.\u00a0 Despite these distractions, it still felt \u2013 for me at least \u2013 to be somewhat of a pilgrimage.\u00a0 The true value of our heritage, I believe, lies not only in the physical attributes of the place but in the intangibles \u2013 the stories and the memories that it carries with it, and the sentiments it evokes.\u00a0 We walked through the woods, soaking up the spirit of the place, but my favourite spot at Walden was a large pile of stones (at that time, about 20 feet across and 6 feet high) immediately adjacent to the original cabin site.\u00a0 It was a cairn that had grown organically, pebble by pebble, from the offerings of visitors who, I\u2019m sure, wanted to leave a token of appreciation \u2013 not so much for the park, but for the man and what he\u2019d left for us.\u00a0 I clambered up and placed my pebble on top of the mound, and left feeling as though I\u2019d made a true connection.<\/p>\n

On the way back through the town of Concord, we stopped at a used book store where I found a well-used copy of Walden<\/em>.\u00a0 It still graces my bookshelf, some twenty years later, and can still evoke the same emotions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remembering Walden I\u2019ve long been an admirer of Henry David Thoreau.\u00a0 One of the keenest observers of the natural world ever to put pen to paper, Thoreau has a great deal to teach us about our relationships \u2013 with nature, with one another, and with ourselves. I first became immersed \u2026<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ians-posts","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nRemembering Walden - My Truths...<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/mytruths.ca\/?p=308\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Remembering Walden - My Truths...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Remembering Walden I\u2019ve long been an admirer of Henry David Thoreau.\u00a0 One of the keenest observers of the natural world ever to put pen to paper, Thoreau has a great deal to teach us about our relationships \u2013 with nature, with one another, and with ourselves. 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