It occurred to me recently to start reading Thoreau’s Walden again. To get back on course. I’m nearly 40 now and life has had it’s way with my life, so to speak. A lovely wife and two adorable little children and a whole lot of responsibility…these have been the drivers of my choices in the past several years. When I cracked Walden the other day, I heard a message loud and clear: (paraphrasing) “My neighbors are all working very hard all day long without stopping to think about why. They do this because that is what they were taught to do. They have no other (good) reason.”
I want to mention here, I want to come clean, that I have a less-than-pure Walden Pond story I sometimes tell at parties: My good old friend, let’s call him “Boots”, had booked a hotel room in Cambridge at a nice establishment. It’s a high rise building with an enormous atrium. Outside of each room is a balcony on the indoor patio. We were many, many flights up and he was trying to seduce an old flame by having a drunken bash in luxury with some good friends. Well, suffice it to say that by the end of the evening (read 4am) the young woman had run to the elevator and he had thrown a wine glass at the closing door. As we settled to finally get some rest, Boots says to me “Crap, I ordered a stretch limousine to take her on a romantic drive to the airport in the morning. I can;t cancel the car–what should I do?” Well, my devious mind wasted no time, i said “let’s just drive around in the limo and drink all day.” Needless to say, he loved the idea. The next morning we drove around Boston in a snowstorm in a luxurious limousine–myself, Boots and a couple of girls. We stopped at a liquor store, picked up some several bottles of champagne and some smokes. We finally told the driver to take us (in a snowstorm mind you) all the way out to Walden Pond for a peak. None of us had ever been. It was a fun, fun drive. When we arrived, I stumbled out of the car to take a leak and get a view of the famed and sacred Pond where Thoreau spend a couple of years writing and opening up the possibilities for us all. I am ashamed to say that my first and only visit to Walden was this sordid and drunken bout but just the same I’m proud of the irony.
