Tonic of Wildness

The first thing I was going to do, when I decided to write a novel about Henry David Thoreau, was visit Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, where he famously lived and wrote for two years in a small cabin in the woods. Everything was arranged, but the week I was meant to drive down from southeastern Ontario, the pandemic arrived, and all plans were cancelled. I finished the book without ever visiting Thoreau’s home environs, my imagined pond having to stand in for the real thing.

But now, four years later, I’m finally here. My novel has been out for months, I’m doing an event in Concord, and I’ve come to the pond for a swim. It’s early on a Saturday at the beginning of October, but the small beach is crowded and the parking lot is already filling up. (I was told to arrive in the morning as the lot is often packed by afternoon, and once it’s full, no access is allowed to Walden Pond State Reservation.)

In the mid-nineteenth century, when Thoreau was...