Guest Post: On Walden Pond, On Election Day

  After casting my ballot on Election Day, I took my two young daughters and my father, who was visiting from Wisconsin, to Walden Pond. It was a sunny fall day, unseasonably warm for November in Massachusetts. We splashed and played and collected stones, and as I watched my girls run free on the sand, […]

Simplify, Simplify

I’ve owned only one copy of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, and I’ve owned it since high school. It’s a 1980 Signet Classic paperback, original price $1.75. Inside the creased front cover, in ballpoint pen, a long-ago student has scrawled, “I want to go to sleep. I’ll never last 1 hr + 20 min reading!” I wasn’t that student—I […]

Naturalist Without a Notebook

One of my New Year’s resolutions is not to write in a journal everyday. I’m terrible at it, even though I wished I loved to scribble daily. I can’t even keep up with my Planner Pad. (In fact, I’ve already lost my 2014 edition). That’s not to say that I haven’t occasionally kept a notebook. […]