Day 2: Skipping into Walden

Today was a pretty exciting day. We woke up early and arrived at Walden Pond early in the morning, where we found a beautiful pond that was a bit too touristy for our liking. The body of water emerged from nowhere, and we walked around it in a rainy, humid morning, which I think is the perfect weather to visit Walden. Personally, that's how I imagine Thoreau: pondering by the shores, taking long meaningful walks, finding shelter from the cold weather in his little self-made hut. We also found some chipmunks (Charlie was our favorite, he was a bit shy at first but we called him and he came back! A video of him will be coming up soon) and birds who were singing and chirping as we hiked around Walden Pond.

   

As we made our way around the pond, we discovered the spot where Thoreau built his cabin. I loved finding this place because I could imagine Thoreau spending his days and nights in this spot, looking at the view of Walden that I was looking at. Visiting Walden helped me envision Thoreau's experience, and once we arrived at the site, we made time to read excerpts from Walden and free write in our journals. Once we were done, we left our mark by stacking a cairn next to where the cabin once was. 

Below is a picture of the view from the hut:

As we continued our hike around Walden, we hiked a bit higher away from the shore and found the railroad tracks. When I was reading Walden I kept wondering where the tracks were, because although I could hear the trains rolling by near where we were, I could not see them although Thoreau said he could. However, once we hiked a bit we found ourselves right by the railroad tracks; it was so interesting to be able to visualize Thoreau's writings. Then, we headed back to the pond where we spent some time just enjoying nature and skipping rocks (shoutout to Daisy and Cole for teaching me back when we were freshmen).

 *Geocache Update: There were only two geocaches around Walden, and they were in the pond, which is unfortunately a bit too advanced for us*

After some research we found that we were only a couple of minutes away from Sleepy Hollow Cemetery where Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts. This was a fun, creepy, and eventful experience. Seeing their tombs was very powerful and we actually left a pencil behind by Thoreau's tombstone as many other people had done before us:

The cemetery was very old and, honestly, it was very big and kind of creepy. The car also got stuck at one point and I really did not want to find myself stranded in a cemetery (again, shoutout to Daisy and her driving skills that got us out of there). Another high was befriending our second animal of the day, a fox that we named Ralph; sadly, though, Ralph was not as warm as Charlie.

We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow, and we hope to meet more cute animals and find more geocaches.