Today The Bog is definitely Thoreau’s Walden
I’d like to withdraw today to a modest cabin by a picturesque pond, and write all the live long day. I’d like to leave the harried folks who push and shove, tailgate and argue, and keep company with the critters who come and go with nary a concern I might be in their way. I will not have one argument here. Not one difference of opinion. And if I was swallowed whole by a bear, it would be infinitely better than having a heart attack at the grocery store, battling fellow shoppers for the last packages of sale-priced pork. Yes indeed, it would be so much better to mulch into this hinterland paradise, my notepad and pen still employed at the final summation, than the futile attempt I make daily, to fit into this frenzy of humanity. I could easily become a hermit. Would you bring me supplies?
Thoreau’s sister used to bring him fresh baking to tide him over at Walden Pond.
There are many times now in this seemingly fatal period of mid-life grumpy, rising as a matter of conscience almost every work week, when I need to “Thoreau-ly” refresh myself, about what truly matters and what doesn’t to the “nose-to-the-grind” writer-kind. What is important enough to write about, and what is quite necessary, for sanity’s sake, to ignore of this modern day hubbub of commerce and exploitation, progress and transformation as rule of order. If you’ve read many of the previously published blogs, posted over this past winter season, you will most certainly recognize the parallel between Thoreau’s retreat to Walden Pond, and my hiatus periods staring out over The Bog here in my Gravenhurst neighborhood.
I have arrived as the downtrodden on this brink of topography, just a hair’s breadth above a tiny crystalline rapids, along the black snaking creek below, with a block of sheer, sharp-edged hate as my burden. I’ve stood here so frustrated with people, places and things that I could have belched a fire stream across the entire expanse of lowland. I could have, with an unholy roar, emptied the valley of all existence. And I have stood here and felt the anger and frustration slip away as if I was but a melting candle, wick to foot, disappearing into a vapor to leave nary a trace of any angry existence.
I have always thought of The Bog as Walden Pond, where I, like the writer Thoreau, could hole-up for a period, a moment or an hour, to truly exhale all expectations, particularly that preponderance of responsibility, the tithe to that modern day mantra of “more is good,” and it is “good to have more than any one else!”
Leaning up against this tall pine at my back, and listening to the soothing spring wind wash through the needles, and the trickle of water over these tiny cataracts, is both heaven and sanctuary for the writer under burden. This scene, this actuality, is of striking revelation. It would be a sin to ignore this heaven on earth. This outreach of salvation! This gracious and life-restoring place reminds one so clearly of mortality, and how fragile our continuance in partnership, particularly on clear days when the sound of chainsaws and earth-movers prevail above the crickets and peepers, the waterfalls and windsong through these endangered evergreens.
There is an enchanting cascade of sun this afternoon, falling in a funneled golden mist of diamond light that attaches to my weary old soul. The warmth and calm of this humble place, slowly brings the heart back to pulse, the spirit back to reckoning, the eyes to clear sight. The voyeur might get giddy with all this frivolous rekindling. The madness of the moderns evaporates away. I have reverence for every wildflower, each tadpole, and the vast array of mysteries I long to quest.
I will awaken in the wee hours in a sweat, having dreamt of The Bog being bulldozed, and feel so ecstatic upon awakening, to find its hauntingly charming silhouette starkly true against the moonlight, framed as art by my bedroom window. I can not imagine what it would be like instead, to rise to a nightmare fulfilled.
We all need to protect our respective Walden Ponds. Muskoka.
I’d like to withdraw today to a modest cabin by a picturesque pond, and write all the live long day. I’d like to leave the harried folks who push and shove, tailgate and argue, and keep company with the critters who come and go with nary a concern I might be in their way. I will not have one argument here. Not one difference of opinion. And if I was swallowed whole by a bear, it would be infinitely better than having a heart attack at the grocery store, battling fellow shoppers for the last packages of sale-priced pork. Yes indeed, it would be so much better to mulch into this hinterland paradise, my notepad and pen still employed at the final summation, than the futile attempt I make daily, to fit into this frenzy of humanity. I could easily become a hermit. Would you bring me supplies?
Thoreau’s sister used to bring him fresh baking to tide him over at Walden Pond.
There are many times now in this seemingly fatal period of mid-life grumpy, rising as a matter of conscience almost every work week, when I need to “Thoreau-ly” refresh myself, about what truly matters and what doesn’t to the “nose-to-the-grind” writer-kind. What is important enough to write about, and what is quite necessary, for sanity’s sake, to ignore of this modern day hubbub of commerce and exploitation, progress and transformation as rule of order. If you’ve read many of the previously published blogs, posted over this past winter season, you will most certainly recognize the parallel between Thoreau’s retreat to Walden Pond, and my hiatus periods staring out over The Bog here in my Gravenhurst neighborhood.
I have arrived as the downtrodden on this brink of topography, just a hair’s breadth above a tiny crystalline rapids, along the black snaking creek below, with a block of sheer, sharp-edged hate as my burden. I’ve stood here so frustrated with people, places and things that I could have belched a fire stream across the entire expanse of lowland. I could have, with an unholy roar, emptied the valley of all existence. And I have stood here and felt the anger and frustration slip away as if I was but a melting candle, wick to foot, disappearing into a vapor to leave nary a trace of any angry existence.
I have always thought of The Bog as Walden Pond, where I, like the writer Thoreau, could hole-up for a period, a moment or an hour, to truly exhale all expectations, particularly that preponderance of responsibility, the tithe to that modern day mantra of “more is good,” and it is “good to have more than any one else!”
Leaning up against this tall pine at my back, and listening to the soothing spring wind wash through the needles, and the trickle of water over these tiny cataracts, is both heaven and sanctuary for the writer under burden. This scene, this actuality, is of striking revelation. It would be a sin to ignore this heaven on earth. This outreach of salvation! This gracious and life-restoring place reminds one so clearly of mortality, and how fragile our continuance in partnership, particularly on clear days when the sound of chainsaws and earth-movers prevail above the crickets and peepers, the waterfalls and windsong through these endangered evergreens.
There is an enchanting cascade of sun this afternoon, falling in a funneled golden mist of diamond light that attaches to my weary old soul. The warmth and calm of this humble place, slowly brings the heart back to pulse, the spirit back to reckoning, the eyes to clear sight. The voyeur might get giddy with all this frivolous rekindling. The madness of the moderns evaporates away. I have reverence for every wildflower, each tadpole, and the vast array of mysteries I long to quest.
I will awaken in the wee hours in a sweat, having dreamt of The Bog being bulldozed, and feel so ecstatic upon awakening, to find its hauntingly charming silhouette starkly true against the moonlight, framed as art by my bedroom window. I can not imagine what it would be like instead, to rise to a nightmare fulfilled.
We all need to protect our respective Walden Ponds. Muskoka.
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