Wandering at Walden

This past weekend I had the privilege of joining the UU student group from Northeastern University on a Saturday retreat to Walden Pond. We spent the day meandering around the pond, sometimes silent, sometimes talking. We stood in front of the rock piles where Thoreau had lived. As many visitors before us had, we attempted to stack the stones near the cabin site into perfectly balanced towers. And we spent some time in reflection.

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           At one point we sat down in the cool shade of the trees overlooking the water and ate our lunch. Then as we finished we each pulled out a book or a journal and spent some time in silence. Our leader broke that silence with a quote from Thoreau. It read, “Unjust laws exist; shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? ” 

            Hearing this quote, I thought a lot about Thoreau’s life. I thought about how he felt like he was paying into an unjust system; that was funding an unjust war. I thought about how for him, he was not content to obey the laws anymore, and so he made his transgression against the laws by leaving the whole system behind to spend a couple years in a cabin. So that instead of feeling guilt and disgust in his complacency and support of the unjust system, he could write in his journals and look out on the most beautiful pond I’ve ever seen.

The pond was perfect, and the sun shone warm, and the sky was so blue and so close. But I was deeply troubled by his words: shall we transgress them [the unjust systems] at once? As if leaving the system was really feasible for anyone other than those not oppressed by it? As if meaningful change could be made from a rocking chair in the forest? As if one person’s silence really upends the system?

We waded in the tepid waters, squishing our toes in the sand. I saw herons glide above the water stocking their prey. And I felt an incredible peacefulness. It was so beautiful and I let myself really reflect and recharge. As I sat with my back against an oak tree, I wondered how much more beautiful the world would be if every person got to spend a perfect end-of-summer day here, enjoying the earth?

I think it’s a fun mental experiment to think about what it would be like to rebel against society and go off to live in a cabin in the woods. But I have to believe that abandoning the problems of a system is not the way to solve them. Stopping for a moment to rest and reflect, can be cathartic. But if we spend too much time ignoring the problems, abandoning the problems, we are just as complacent as if we did not see them in the first place.

I reveled in the serenity of Walden Pond, but it is not a place for living long term. It’s a place for pausing. A place to chew on challenging words. A place for washing away worries in warm waters and balancing boulders. But at the end of the day it’s a place for leaving. Because the problems of the world are real, and they won’t be fixed from the peaceful shores of the pond.

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