So I’ve discovered where I’ll be spending my afternoons on nice days until the school year is over.

It’s so beautiful, I can hardly stand it.

I went to Walden Pond for the first time ever Monday. I’ve heard of it, but hadn’t yet been until the weather was so gorgeous I couldn’t bear going to walk on a treadmill indoors. When the weather gets nice I need to be outside. Anything else is less than acceptable. You see, I love to walk. I’ve never been a runner (believe me, I’ve tried) but walking suits me just fine. When I first moved to Boston and lived in Back Bay I would walk an hour to and from Charlestown everyday. When I moved to Brookline and worked in Kenmore Square I would stroll up and down Beacon Street on my way to work, and on my way home. Then, I got a job 20 miles out of the city and walking to work was no longer possible, but I still managed to get some good walking in.  When I lived near Washington Square this was easy. I’d just head down to Cleavland Circle and walk around the reservoir with the sun on my face and the good feeling that if I walked fast enough I could be back to my apartment in an hour or so. There’s a gorgeous pond just steps away from my apartment now, but you can’t walk around it, which has been the biggest bummer to me. Until Monday, when I found Walden Pond directly on my route home from work– and it’s beyond perfect.

It’s the pond where Henry David Thoreau spent two years of his life living simply, living in a self-build hut in the woods on the land of his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. It was here in these woods where he wrote his book Walden; or, Life in the Woods.

It’s an incredible part of history and I can’t believe I have the ability to visit here every day. The prairie girl in me is just bursting at the seams.

This is the site where Thoreau’s hut used to be. There are now only a pile of rocks to mark where the cabin once was, but there is a museum in Concord that contains the actual bed, desk, and chairs from his dwelling in the woods. 

The trees are still fairly bare now, and though the scene is still breathtaking, imagine what it will be like in the spring, summer, and fall. Parking is $5 a day, but I went with the $35 yearly pass because I plan on seeing this place through the seasons. It’s glorious, I’m sure.

There is a path around the entire pond that is incredibly beautiful and it’s a little over 1.5 miles around. The past two days I’ve made two loops and it’s just about the perfect thing to do after a day of teaching. I’ve been bringing my class outside for our read-aloud every day, but besides that we’re mostly stuck indoors. This is a way for me to get that fresh air that I’m craving desperately around this time of year.

And now that the light shines into the evening this makes for one happy lady.

And lucky too, ever so lucky–

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment…

— there is no other life but this.”