Author Archives: Sandy Stott

By Corinne H. Smith

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” ~ “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” WALDEN

At the conclusion of our house tours, we encourage our visitors to consider how some of Thoreau’s philosophies apply to their lives. How have they chosen to live deliberately? How have they turned thought into action? If they wish, our guests can write their declarations on cards and tack them up on our bulletin board. Here are some of our favorite answers, gathered since we opened the Thoreau Farm Birthplace to the public in 2010.

~ By being thankful each morning when I wake up. I’m alive, well, and have all that I need.

~ I recycled an old, found sweater with new buttons, and I’m wearing it.

~ I make music with non-musicians from everyday objects.

~ I stop and look my children in their eyes when they talk to me — give them my whole attention.

~ I usually don’t do anything, which isn’t fun.

~ I changed professions from dentistry to human services with a large decrease in monetary remuneration. I devote much non-working time for working to change society: to a society based on production for human need, not profits, and to an end to social injustice.

~ I’m writing a script based on the life and teachings of Thoreau. I hope my work will inspire others to live their best lives, the way HDT did.

~ By conserving my usage of electricity, reducing waste, and reusing anything I can. Walking!

~ I try not to judge, but to understand. It’s hard work.

~ I give the cat a pat on the head.

~ By treasuring each moment of my day, of my life – even the most horrible ones! And by sharing this sense of “gift-moment” around me!

~ I am educating myself about where the food we eat comes from, and making choices about what I eat based on what I learn!

~ Ignore regulations. Respect the heart of Civil Disobedience, of love for the earth.

~ I gather local wild berries and other edible wild plants and mushrooms, and prepare and share them with family, friends, and other folks interested in connecting to nature via their taste buds.

~ We recycle. We grow some vegetables. We plant flowers. We recycle.

~ I try to live in the moment. Follow your bliss!

~ I enjoy being in a private place in nature. I think about the wonderful mixture of gases that I inhale and the biochemical processes of photosynthesis that produce our oxygen, food and water. As I exhale, I thank the plants by giving them the carbon dioxide that they need to live and to continue to extend life on our unique and beautiful planet.

~ I try to be a good caretaker of the little bits of history and life that are around me.

~ We haven’t had a TV for 35 years, haven’t eaten animal flesh for 35 years, and have been practicing vegan living of the interconnectedness of all life for 32 years and haven’t been to doctors in 35 years. Life is a celebration of loving kindness. We are all related!

~ By being thankful each morning when I wake up. I’m alive, well, and have all that I need.

We feel inspired by these examples provided by our new friends. What about YOU, blog readers? How have YOU chosen to live deliberately? Our online bulletin board awaits your input below.

Okay, I had to wait until November 11th to send this, but have you looked outside? Have you walked out into the slanting light? Into the wakened air? No more sun’s sweaty palm pressing down on you, no more surfeit of light making you squint, no more panting dog of summer. The haze is gone; you can see.

November is the month of sight, and it is not just because of the cool, low-riding sun and the light’s nosy angles. The leafless trees wave their bare limbs; stonewalls emerge from hiding; the river shines with sky. The long view opens up, even as the days shorten. Once, someone said to me that living through November was like looking down a well — it was a dark place rimmed with stone, ending in watery reflection. I looked out my classroom window, toward the boathouse and the sedulous Sudbury, which had crept higher after summer’s starvation. One of the campus redtail hawks waited atop the hemlock, probably scouting for a snack; the air looked like the clearest water. If darkness were to be found it was in the hawk’s eyes — November is, after all, also the hungry season. “You’re crazy,” I said. “Why not take a walk?”

Taking a walk is often sound advice, but in November, it’s necessity. Only a little of the short day’s magic makes it through the window; you have to be out there to see it. Let’s go. Let’s leave the building, walking west into the afternoon’s lit promise; then we’ll turn north over the river and meander finally northeast along its banks.

Yesterday, after time’s slow hands slid south of four o’clock, the sun dropped beneath a western lid of clouds and the brightest light poured into the woods where I walked. I had been ambling along the Assabet River, making my way upstream and away from school in a dreamy fashion, my mind skimming the surface of one thought then another. Streaming light washed through the understory of the woods, even as the treetops lifted still into the falling dusk. It seemed that some impressionist had been turned loose with collections of pale leaves that he had wired to the spare branches of first this thin tree, then that one, stretching away to where they fused into a hammered gold backdrop. My back to the sun, I watched the leaves glow, saw light rise from the matted grasses and ricochet wildly through the limbs and out over the river. Suffused with light, like many before me, I felt lifted; affection brimmed.

And I thought of the work I’d walked away from for short sojourn amid the trees. There is always the grey-brown of routine laced with fatigue – it is always stereotypical November in some classroom, in the pages of some text, in our plodding minds. We read on, calculate odds, solve for our various Xs. Oddly, ironically, the same routine, the same November walking, brings us to flooding light, to moments when insight burns like lit leaves and the whole classroom or mind is bright. “Who knows when it will come?” I said, slipping easily into the long habit of self-address. “Surely tomorrow,” I answered and turned again toward November’s school.

Coda: November happinesses I left out:

• Thanksgiving, the year’s best holiday, the only one imagined from food and talk.

• First snow – thought crystallized

• Cold air laced with woodsmoke

• Russet and magenta show of the oaks

• Reading in a pool of lamplight in the early dark

November’s first cold days have arrived with their light that makes me want to look closely at what’s close by. I like these slow days of short, clear light.

Still, a recent announcement from The Concord Free Public Library about the formation of the Concord Seed Lending Library made me look up and forward.

And, of course, it furrowed my brow a little. What, I wondered, is a Seed Lending Library? What do I borrow? What do I return? And, given my habit of slow use, can a seed be overdue?

A quick trip on the Web took me to concordseedlendinglibrary.org, and there I found the new group’s mission statement and their intent to open for business next spring.

Here’s their purpose: The mission of the Concord Seed Lending Library, an initiative of the Concord Free Public Library, is to increase our community’s capacity to feed itself wholesome food by being an accessible and free source of locally-adapted plant seeds, supplied and cultivated by and for area residents. The Concord Seed Lending Library promotes biodiversity through the time-honored tradition of seed saving, nurtures locally-adapted plant varieties, and fosters community resilience, self- reliance, and a culture of sharing. The Concord Seed Lending Library strives to fulfill its mission by establishing a depository of open pollinated seeds held in trust for members of the community and by providing education and instruction about proper seed growing and saving methods.

That makes wonderful sense, I thought. A central collection of seeds could promote a sort to agricultural literacy akin to the reading literacy traditionally advanced by a library. And, of course, seeds do fit in conveniently compact spaces; such a lending library could be extensive and tiny at the same time.

There’s more, as you may imagine, much more to be learned, and I’ll return with further thoughts. But for now, those who want to learn more can attend an informational talk with the library’s Co-Coordinators Enid Hart Boasberg and Kitty Smith, and with Debbie Bier, a board member of the Thoreau Farm on November 10th at 3:00 pm at the Concord Free Public Library’s Fowler Branch, at 1322 Main St.

Not that I or any other seasonal characters want to rush the daily constellations of light and cold and cloud and…perhaps…snow, and arrive at spring too soon. But seeds, as Henry Thoreau knew, are dreams too. And promise of spring seems good seed for winter dreams.