Remembering Walden...

Dear Diary,

I dear friend gave me a lovely book of illustrations by the artist Michael McCurty, Walden Then and Now: An alphabetical tour of Henry Thoreau's pond.  Of course, that got me thinking about all my visits to Walden over the years.  I try to go every few years to walk the trails and commune along the shores of the pond where Thoreau went to live for two years, two months and two days back in 1845.  I've always said that each soul has a centering place, where it feels most at home and connected.  Concord, Massachusetts has always been that place for me and now that I've learned that I am a cousin of Louisa May Alcott, it draws me to it even more. 

This is a photograph I took of the path on the shores of Walden in July, 2011 and it has always interested me.  It seems as if only the right side of the picture is in color, the majority looks very monochrome but it was a full color picture.  I wasn't doing much color work then but the following month I went to Scotland and stayed a month on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides.  It was there that I fully embraced color.  I always look at this photograph as the bridge between two ways of regarding the landscape for me.

I also realized as I looked at the book that it is time for me to re-explore Walden and Concord.  It was been 5 years since I last visited.  I've added it to my list of places for this summer.  How will I experience it this time?  So much has changed since my last visit.  It will be interesting to see what attracts my attention this time...what new part of me will be revealed through the photographs I make there?  How will my "then" Walden differ from my "now" Walden?