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 living here, there were other people staying in the woods or passing through. There were train tracks at one end of the pond, and wood choppers were felling forest trees. But the quiet writing experience that Thoreau sought would have been more than possible most days, even with those other presences.

There is nothing quiet about twenty-first-century Walden Pond. From anywhere on the water or on the narrow fenced‑in path that encircles it, a multitude of overlapping noise can be heard: jets passing overhead, the train, human voices and activity, and the incessant sounds of cars from the busy roadway. Silence is impossible, a fact I find initially distressing, as historically Walden has been associated with contemplative peace, and people journey here for this experience. It is hard not to feel disheartened by the cacophonous overlay of the modern world. In the interpretive centre, the curators have cannily acknowledged this reality by encouraging everyone to “find your own Walden,” meaning somewhere that can actually be silent and allow for a quiet appreciation of nature.

Near the centre is a replica of Thoreau’s wooden cabin, with a bronze statue of Thoreau himself, walking in the direction of the road. The tip of one of his shoes is gold and shiny, testament to the thousands of visitors who have knelt down to touch it. People arrive from all over the world, and I am aware that, for many who live in crowded urban areas, Walden Pond will be experienced as wilderness.

But, coming from Canada, I am used to a different level of wild. The little cove I swim in every day in summer, less than half an hour from my house, is so much wilder than Walden Pond. There are no people, no cars or trains or planes, just the creak of bird wings in the sky overhead, the call of a distant loon. When I imagined Thoreau’s landscape — at least while writing the Walden Pond scenes in my novel — my swimming spot was what I had in my head.

The main beach is on the roadway end of the pond, complete with changing rooms and washrooms, and a concrete boat launch for the canoes, paddleboards, and rowboats that flicker over the surface of the water. Farther up one side is a smaller beach with fewer people, and I decide to swim from there.

Formed by a glacier more than 10,000 years ago, the pond is a kettle hole, over a hundred feet deep in the middle. It is half a mile from end to end and a mile and a half in circumference. The water is cold and remarkably clear: “so transparent that the bottom can easily be discerned at the depth of twenty-five or thirty feet,” as Thoreau said of it.

Today I am one of many swimmers. The more serious ones are speeding up the middle of the pond, going end to end, their orange floats bobbing behind them. A group of teenage boys are splashing one another at the water’s edge. Three very old women are debating who should go in first. One man is explaining to another how the swim will cure his aches and pains and help his kidneys. I hear a lot of laughter and easy banter.

Heading up one side of the pond, admiring the tall feathery pines on the opposite shore, I pass a woman on her way back to the beach and we smile at each other. I realize then how amazing it is to swim here, and how everyone is experiencing this wonder, how this communal happiness is the legacy of Thoreau’s famous solitude. It feels like a good evolution.