Its landscape is nothing special. There are no lofty peaks, ledges of rock, old-growth forests or flowing streams. Rather, Walden Pond is an ordinary body of water surrounded by sterile sand and gravel soils, and covered by woods. It’s one of perhaps 50,000 small lakes sprinkled between Nantucket Island, Massachusetts, and Great Falls, Montana.
Walden Pond matters because of the book it inspired. This is where Henry David Thoreau translated his experiment in living deliberately into his masterpiece, Walden. In the woods surrounding a 62-acre lake in Concord, Massachusetts, Thoreau built a one-room house with his own hands. He lived there for “two years, two months, and two days” between July 4, 1845, and Sept. 6, 1847, waking with the rising of the sun; finding the right balance between life…
