I follow a historian who writes a daily column discussing current events and their historical antecedents. Some days she posts a photo of the Maine coast, offering it as a respite from the swirl of life. This week with Thanksgiving on the horizon, I share a photo from Walden Pond—one of my favorite places on earth. Every Thanksgiving day for nearly twenty-five years, my family walked the trail that wraps around this iconic place. The site of Thoreau’s cabin offered a gathering spot for those who raced ahead to wait for the slower-footed parents and grandparents who took a more measured, perhaps deliberate, approach to the excursion. Thoreau’s words from Walden spoke to the spirit of Thanksgiving and what it meant to be together, reminding us that it was enough.
“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." —Thoreau