Just came back from a ‘Thelma and Louise’ kinda road trip with my cousin to Northeastern United States. Kinda but not exactly, for obvious reason: I’ve come back, bearing photos and a foliage report that says it’s not too late to head out even now.
According to locals, due to the warm, extended summer days, foliage change has delayed by about a week. I started my drive in late September to the first week of October, and I’d say the foliage color change was from 10% to 40%, depending on the locale.
Here’s the itinerary of my travels:
Wayland, MA –> Portland, ME –> Rockport / Camden, ME –> N. Conway, NH –>
Stowe, VT –> Williamstown, MA –> Wayland, MA
I’ll be posting interesting sights I encountered during this trip. Here’s my first entry.
Walden Pond
I started from Wayland, MA, a suburb about 30 mins. drive west of Boston. Walden Pond is just 6.2 miles north of Wayland. In pursuit of solitude, to taste the bare essence and to ‘suck out the marrow of life’, Henry David Thoreau cleared some trees in the woodlands owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, built a 10′ x 15′ cabin and on July 4, 1845, began to live there by the Pond, an experience that lasted two years, two months and two days.
A stone-throw from the parking lot of the Walden Pond State Reservation is a replica of Thoreau’s cabin. A friendly ranger greeted me:
Inside the cabin were the bare necessities, a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs: “one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.”
As for the Pond, it was pure serenity. As for fall foliage, I could only see it in my mind’s eye:
So you could imagine my surprise to see beaches and swimmers. But of course, this is now a National Park, and it’s summer still:
The day was September 28, the few autumn leaves reminded me that transition of the seasons was indeed happening, however slowly:
As I walked around the lake, a sign pointed me to the actual site of Thoreau’s cabin in the woods:
And beside it, these famous words of his:
But nowhere could I find a sign posting this other quote which I also admire, on the economy of work:
“For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labor of my hands, and I found that, by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.”
Don’t you just love his calculations?
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Follow my New England series:
Ripple Effects 