Revisiting Walden

I finished my reread of Walden last night. As I noted back in March when I started it, I read it in between the flood of library books with due dates (15 of them to be exact; yeah, I'm bragging). I'm not sure Henry would have approved my setting aside one book (his or any other) to take on the others, but it is what it is.

I found an observation in the closing chapter of Walden that made me smile. Henry's experiment of living at Walden Pond lasted from July 1845 to September 1847. Walden was published in 1854. So he was smack in the middle of the nineteenth century. On that topic, he wrote that he preferred "not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by."

Restless. Nervous. Bustling. Trivial. We are six years shy of the 175th anniversary of the publication and Henry's words still ring true. He saw the railroad change his community and the Industrial Revolution change the nation in his day. What would Henry make of our day? Of climate change? Or automobiles and airplanes? Or (gulp) of social media? (I admit it: writing that last question made me burst out laughing, thinking of Henry on social media.)

On a personal note, Henry placed an "a" with a hyphen in front of several words: "a-fishing," "a-berrying." Blogger friend Kim quipped that she would be a-weeding this summer. I liked that and have adopted that phrase for my upcoming gardening season: "Time is but a garden I go a-weeding in." Henry had a star-pebbled sky, my garden will hold a weed-pebbled bed. I will be grateful if I can immerse myself and let go of time when I am a-weeding.

I wrote this post out longhand last evening, sitting on our front porch. The porch faces west; the sun was almost below our across-the-street neighbor's garage roof, so there was a bit of a glare yet as I wrote. We have had an erratic (at times) early spring—most of the daffodils are bloomed out, the buds on the dogwood tree are just opening. Birds were calling as the day wound down. I have seen the first bees of the season: both honey and bumble. And earlier, while eating lunch before open windows, I heard the spring peepers for the first time. I keep a very sporadic journal in which I make notes about the seasons, the sky, and such. After noting hearing the peepers, I looked back to last year to see if I had made any comment. Yes, I had; last year I first heard the peepers on April 12 as well. 

And for that, Henry might have given me an approving nod.