Thoreau Farm

Page 29 of Walden is loose. It slips from its place, dips into flight and begins the seesaw motion of falling to the floor. Instinctively I grab for it…as if it were glass and might shatter when it hits. I miss; it floats, lands, settles. There. Solo.

I lean over and do what we do with newspaper spread over the floor when we paint a room. I start to read: Penobscot Indians in Concord, “living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snow was nearly a foot deep around them…” It’s the Shelter section with its vestiges of a wild past and it modern, various “boxes” and their landlords “dogging you for rent.”

“I am far from jesting,” Henry writes, reminding us that he jests often, and that he is often “far” from expected opinion. “Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot be so disposed of.”  Well, that explains why this initial chapter will stretch on for another 50 pages, testing attention spans and taxing interest before we finally get to spend time at the pond. We would know what’s “necessary” before taking up residence, after all.

The moment interests me, and I turn this copy of Walden on edge. Four more pages slip from their moorings; there is a scatter of Walden on the floor. And now it occurs to me that this book is so exquisitely written and structured that any one page opens out to the whole book’s universe of thought. Each leaf suggests a fullness of thought, an examined life caught in print.

Parent and Child

I gather the fallen pages, slot them back into place and resume reading. I slip through familiar passages. Without looking at the numbers, I know what page I’m on. Then, my mind snags of something new, something unremembered. On the page before my falling leaf, I find this:

Every child begins the world again, to some extent, and loves to stay out doors, even in the wet and cold. It plays house, as well as horse, having an instinct for it. Who does not remember the interest with which when young he looked at shelving rocks, or any approach to a cave?

Here, in the season of fallen leaves and widening view, I see the “shelving rocks” off to the side of the trail, and I tend toward them.

Perhaps, I think, I’ll some day read Walden as its leaves fall.

Oct 17th: The idea first comes to me as I walk back from school a little before two in the afternoon on this blissful fall day. Why not, a voice whispers, run out by the pond, and why not take the heat of that run into the cooling Walden waters. By the time I reach the Fairhaven trails a little after four, the whisper has grown bold: “Listen,” it says, “how many more days like this will you get?”

I defer the existential question for the seasonal one. “Not many,” I answer. “If any.”

The day: clear, dry blue, with temps in the low 70s and the slightest beeze; I am returned to the season of ease.

So, after 30-some minutes of hoofing through the light-strewn woods, I circle down to the pond and my favorite little beach on the southwest side across from Thoreau’s Cove. There in a slat of sunlight, I strip off shoes and shirt and wade tenderly over the pebbles beneath the transparent water. The water knows its season, even if the air has been gulled; it’s chilly, somewhere in the 50s. It’s dunk-and-gasp water. But after that, if I stay still and let the envelope around me warm, it becomes again bask-and-look water. And so I do.

First at Henry’s far shore, still bathed in sun, then at the surface around me. Oak and beech leaves and pine needles float by me from west to east; those leaves with curled tips catch the light breeze and sail rapidly, while the rest go languidly by. Here, a foot in front of me is a tiny emerald fly whose right wing has broken the surface tension, and so he is mired, his free wing beating. He floats over my hand, and it rises whitely from the depths, lifting precisely, breaking the surface, and it catches him perfectly, carrying him free, even as the water sluices away. The fly rights himself and begins to walk his new land, clambering over the small hairs, walking up finger. I am, I think, the god of emerald flies. A little divinity to be sure, but here, immersed in this pond, with this fly walking now toward the uplands of my wrist, I am god (note the small “g”).

I walk from the water, and, as I coax the little green fly toward a still-green leaf, he lifts away, vanishes.

All gods get left, I think, as I leave the pond.

On the way back through the yellow-leaf woods by Fairhaven Bay, I flush two pileated woodpeckers, who laugh first and then fly. They know.

Note: It’s not often that a search of various sites and sources can’t turn up one of my sightings, but such is the case here. I have no little green flyer to show you, but I offer assurance that we both were there…for a short while.

By Corinne H. Smith

It happened to me again recently, when I was quietly talking about Thoreau with someone. She said that she remembered reading the book “On Walden Pond” in college. Yikes! She meant “Walden,” of course: more formally, “Walden; or, Life in the Woods.” But she automatically merged the title with the more recent movie/play, “On Golden Pond,” probably without even noticing or thinking about it. She’s not the first person to do this. I just smiled and shook my head to myself.

The phenomenon must have started soon after 1981, when Ernest Thompson’s play “On Golden Pond” was released as a feature film starring Henry Fonda, Katherine Hepburn, and Jane Fonda. You no doubt know the story. Aging and retired college professor Norman Thayer and his wife Ethel visit their lakeside cabin in Maine for what could easily be the last summer. They entertain and get to know their soon-to-be step-grandson. Their estranged daughter finally makes her peace with her father, although this act doesn’t come easily. The film eventually earned three Academy Awards and three Golden Globes, and it came in second in ticket sales in 1981. Only “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was more popular at the box office that season.

When we meet and greet people and talk about Henry Thoreau — anywhere, anytime, and not only in Concord — they may mis-speak and call Thoreau’s book, “On Walden Pond.” Obviously, they mix the two entities. They know that Thoreau lived at Walden Pond. They’ve heard a similar phrase in the movie title “On Golden Pond,” and so they combine the two, without even realizing that they’ve done it. I estimate that at least 20% of our public does this.

Some Thoreau scholars and enthusiasts are bugged or even aggravated by this recurring mistake. They can be quick to judge and to correct folks. After all, the literary classic starred Henry Thoreau, and not Henry Fonda. I’ve gotten to the point where I no longer chastise anyone or insist upon proper nomenclature. I just continue the conversation and call the book “Walden” and let it go. I hope that the other person’s subconscious mind hears and homes in on the variation as I say the correct title.

I thought that this practice would fade with a younger generation who may not have seen the 1981 movie. But then a TV version was released in 2001, featuring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. And “On Golden Pond” stage shows and related initiatives continue to be held everywhere. It seems unlikely that the tale will ever leave the American cultural scene. This is good, because it’s a great story.

When you stop to consider the two, it turns out that they have more in common than you may see at first. Both are about a man living by a lake in New England. The setting is remote enough to be a bit isolated, but near enough to a town for supplies and society. The man knows the place intimately, and he shares its natural resources with a young person, especially through fishing. “Walden” develops a number of metaphors and analogies in its text, and it seems that “On Golden Pond” borrows a few in its script as well, especially whenever a loon appears.

The big difference is that Henry Thoreau is in his twenties and is generally contemplating the beginnings of his adult life. Norman Thayer is considering the end. Their purposes and approaches are different. Or are they? At their cores, both pieces are about Life and experiences, and about what challenges lie ahead. Never mind the fine line between fiction and nonfiction.

I decided to contact playwright Ernest Thompson to see what he might make of this mix-up. He hadn’t been aware of it. “If there’s solace to be found on the shores of either idyllic body of water,” he said, “it is, I believe, that all of us, occasionally anyway, yearn for a sanctuary away from the madding crowds and the materialism of our increasingly spiritually-corrupt culture.” He said that “On Golden Pond” is “also about the journey to enlightenment, six of them actually, and how those travelers are forced to learn to share the road and adapt their pride and philosophies to align more successfully with others.” As for a connection to “Walden” and its pond and famous resident, he noted that Norman did quote from a few well-known authors. “Had I foreseen the problem,” he said, “I would’ve thrown in a little Thoreau instead of Dumas and Twain.”

Will the instances of the “On Walden Pond” merger be further perpetuated, now that I’ve brought the issue to light? I don’t know. I take the risk. The book and the movie may be forever intertwined. And that may not be a bad thing.