The first time I was ever at Walden Pond in early 1999, I thought the cairn near the house site was made of stones from Thoreau’s chimney. I thought it was strange that no one had stolen the stones and made some awesome bookends. I didn’t realize that people actually brought them up to the spot on purpose. Though I’m sure people take them all the time, thinking the same thing that I thought — else that pile would be a mountain by now. I considered it once before I visited in April 2000, musing in my dorm room at Goucher over cheap wine and/or vodka. I’m glad I didn’t.

For the first time three weeks ago, I actually found a stone and added it to the pile. I chose a small one because I didn’t want to make the pile very large. And I am lazy and wasn’t feeling well that day.

I hope that people will visit a spot significant to me after I am dead. If only ya’ll understood the awesomeness and it’s world-rocking potentiality. Or maybe you do, and that’s why you read this blog.

Don’t call me humble.

[Oh yeah, I uploaded some Walden Pond photos to Flickr in this set here. And I'll upload more in the coming days.]

[Walden Pond, November 2006.]

I normally get sad when fall is over, even though it means that it’s time for Christmas/Winter Holidays, which I love so much. But the holiday season is always shortened by exams/finals and travelling. As such, I usually deny that it’s the holiday season until I get to Baltimore, around a week before Christmas. So the season is short, sad, and I barely get to jam on X-mas tunes on my mandolin. My online gifts came late the past two years, since I waited so long to care about Christmas.

This year, I have no finals or exams (none forever, either!). No travelling; I’m home in Charm City. And Thanksgiving came so early (almost as early as possible, which it will be next year, no?). We have our cards and giftwrap already. Started shopping for friends, picking out the perfect gear for the family. Stuff for the wife. Got some X-mas colored pens for doing my work with. Christmas music. Last night, I sat in the back of a pickup truck making up nasty lyrics to “Do You Hear What I Hear?” and “O Holy Night” (the latter of which is nice on mandolin). I’m all Elven early.

And of course everyone asks if I’m going to be Santa with my beard. It’s almost long enough, but it’s far too red. Maybe I can color it and be a back-up Santa. I’ll work on eating candy to get more plump.

So the “family” on my father’s side is…weird.  There are very few people on that side that I am actually related to by blood, and the rest only come from marriage — a marriage that was dissolved by death in January (see the joy here and here).  Very nasty, and if you knew, you’d think I was nasty if I was sad about the loss, etc.  Anyway, with this break, you’d think the drama on my father’s side would be over, since his father was free of the parasite he married.  You’d think he’d have his father back.

But no.  Old Pop allowed the kin of the witch to control him immediately, before her big ass was even in the ground.  Now he lives with them, in a house he paid to have built onto theirs, which he pretty gave them anyway — the house where my dad grew up.  I should really try to reserve the term rednecks for people that deserve it, and I am not sure these people do.  I know some very nice rednecks, but these people are scum.  Enough said.

Turns out they had my grandfather out late last night.  He likes to stay up late and sleep late.  He always has.  Whenever I talk to him, it’s usually pretty late at night, even for me.  Okay.  But no one was watching him, and he’s in very very very poor health.  He can’t walk without a walker, and he’s falling all the time.  Very weak.  Well, like I said, no one was watching him, and when he went to get one of the pieces of crap at midnight to go home, he fell.  They took him to the hospital because he fell hard — thought he might have broken something.  No.  He had another heart attack.  He’s had so many that I literally have no idea how many, and neither does anyone, including him.  He’s had scars from having his ribs spread since I was a little boy, at least since the early 1980s.

What’s worse, they didn’t bother to call my father — his son — until almost noon today.

We have learned that they are feeding him fried fish, steak — all things he is under strict orders not to eat and has been for years and years.  I think they are trying to kill him.  Seriously, I do.  When his wife died and that “house” wasn’t built and when he was living in his own house, he was doing fine.  Driving himself around, cooking, visiting with my father.  But literally the week he moved in with them, he got sick and starting falling and needing the walker.

Aside from being joyful that a nasty person was no longer nastying up the earth, I think we thought we’d have our grandfather — not “back” since we never really had him.  And I know that at least I was happy to think that my father might have his dad back, because, well, I can’t tell you why.  But having him back would have been one of the most splendid things in the world for my father, I can tell you.  And I’m crazier about my father than he is about his father even, so you can imagine the level of joy I’m talking about without knowing the details and bullshit.

But no, it wasn’t to be.  Some people really don’t want to exercise their own wills and give into the people who care about their last will and testament and what they can get since they do not like to work and instead like for people to give them money and houses and stuff for free.

Some people like being prisoners.

The tables at the wedding I went to on the 4th were set very beautifully.  My own wedding was very simple, so  the evening turned out to be a lesson in appreciating other people’s tastes.  And by appreciating, I mean realizing how pig-headed I can be.  Often.  It was a very nice affair.   I wonder if I will start questioning my own taste now?

Speaking of taste, my Chinese take-out yesterday arrived with excellent tofu.  And what turned out to be chicken in there.  They realized that they messed up my order and replaced it in like ten minutes (Chow Mein Charlies rocks my take-out world).  But not before a piece of meat that I ate wrecked my stomach.  And I have a strong stomach.  Usually.  I thought the whole “wisdom” that vegetarians who suddenly eat meat getting sick was just PETA propaganda.  Maybe it is, and it was just in my head.  But seriously.  Ouch.

Whenever we make our pilgrimage to Walden Pond, we always take the train to Concord and then walk to Walden. I am not sure how far that is, probably around two miles. It feels nicely Thoreauvian that way, though I know that Henry took a much different route himself.

I just finished Walen Pond: A History. Everything in the book wraps up in October 2002, the month before the last fall I was there. We dropped by during/after a thunderstorm in July 2003, the day before we moved. But the real last time we visited for more than a few wet minutes on the beach and a gift shop visit was November 2, 2002. The book talked about the low water levels were that year, and I remember being able to walk around the entire pond on the shore, not just on the trail. I was afraid that if I didn’t finish the book prior to our visit last week, finishing it now would make me sad. But when I read the last third of it today, I realized that reading it before last week would have been depressing, since the writer talks about the last fall I was there.

When I think harder, however, I feel ashamed that I thought anything about Walden would be depressing to me. It’s one of the biggest comforts in the world to me. No matter how badly or how well it is managed and preserved, it will always be there. Given how many things have changed since I moved from Boston and how many things will have changed when I next visit Carbondale, it’s nice to have something that will always welcome me back.