Walden Pond is located near Concord, MA, and is the site where Henry David Thoreau lived for two years in a simple cabin in the woods and wrote some of his most memorable works.  Thoreau is best known for his book Walden, a treatise on simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay Resistance to Civil Government, also known as Civil Disobedience, an argument for disobedience to an unjust state.

Although I understand that it’s quite busy on weekends, there were no lines and plenty of parking when I visited on Monday.  The main attraction for locals seems to be the pretty beach surrounded by forest land.

I took the loop trail and walked all the way around the pond.  The trail was well traveled and in excellent condition, but there were only a few other people there when I visited.  In an attempt to preserve the surrounding forest the path was fenced on both sides, but I didn’t find that this detracted from my enjoyment in walking there, and I had a good view of the pond through the trees all the way around.

On the far side of Walden Pond I came across the original site of Thoreau’s cabin, although it’s gone now, and only identifiable by markers.

A sign with one of his most famous quotes was also there.

And not far away there was a reproduction of the cabin he lived in, along with the kind of simple furniture he used.  Considering the kind of trip I’m currently undertaking, I could see myself being very happy in a cabin like this for a while!

Aside from the fact that Thoreau lived and worked here, there’s little to say about Walden Pond other than that it’s a nice peaceful place to spend the day.  Of Thoreau himself, I believe the best way to know more about him is to read his works, so I’ll leave that to the reader and won’t try to tell you about his life or philosophies here.  I’ll simply wrap up by including some of my favorite quotes by Thoreau below.

• Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
• The heart is forever inexperienced.
• The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.
• None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.
• It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
• Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.
• Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
• There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.
• You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.
• The savage in man is never quite eradicated.
• I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live and could not spare any more time for that one.
• In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.
• How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.