Figure 1 – Summer Idyll at Walden Pond, Concord, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2021
Rapidly now spring is transitioning into spring. Summer is the sense of intense light and perhaps a bit of blurring haze. I took the image of Figure 1 at Walden Pond last week. Children playing at the water’s edge – the perfect summer idyll!
The scene would undoubtably set Thoreau ablaze. This is not what he bargained for. He came here to commune with nature, to transcend beyond rationalism in the firm belief that divinity pervades all nature. Today it is kind of spoiled by high school coeds happy to reveal their youyhful physiques, strutting about in bikinis, and middle-aged men stuffing themselves into ridiculous wet suits that hold in their guts.
I sigh and grumble like an old man!
“The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?”
― Walden