Living Deliberately

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

Saturday, July 29, 2006

Terminal Ecology

The end of the road. This road. These clover and daisies and oaks and ash, all of the familiar insects and spiders, rodents and farm animals. Everything left behind. Here where it belongs in the temperate zone of central New England. I watched thunder storms roll in last night, powerful, sky-blackening, cool air churing, rain exploding thunder making cells of disturbed air and water. I felt the heat of the afternoon sun standing ankle-deep in the water of Walden Pond. Felt its photons trace my skin as I made a breast stroke across the aqua-marine waters. It has become something. Perhaps it was always something. I said my utterings of gratitude to the diminutive French-Canadian recluse whose insistence on something true led to something real. And I dried my feet as wind turned up and people were called from the waters, an ominous thunder rumbling in the near distance, barely wavering your ear drum.

Roads not ending but forking. Dividing. The new one on sand covered limestone. These will not be the plants of my youth. This will be novelty at every turn. Unexpected and much to learn. Florida lies the future.

May it meet me well.

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