so the idea is this...

Last year, at the end of September, my friends (Miles, Alyssa, Mike) and I went to Walden Pond. I had been talking and talking about a bunch of us going out into New England to hike or camp, but we never actually made the move.

Finally, after two years of going to school in Boston and a year of having easy access to a car, we managed to pull ourselves together and drive out what ended up only being about half an hour to Walden. (This seemed the obvious first choice since its such a famous spot, and we had all read the book in high school, so, why not?) Lyss and I were both really looking forward to this because there isn't as much "free-range" nature in Boston, for lack of better phrasing. There's plenty of gardens and parks - some of which can almost make you forget you're in the middle of the city. But it had been a while since we'd gotten out of the city. The boys brought a football and I brought a disposable, and we went for a walk around Walden.

First stop was a small beach, where we waited for Miles to pee, because Miles always has to pee. Mike sat on the sand while Alyssa and I tested the water, which was unsurprisingly freezing. I was the only one who ended up getting in, but I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee where nature was never hard to come by - drive an hour in almost any direction away from downtown and you've been in the country for a while- and I was determined to take full advantage of the abundance of nature I wad suddenly surrounded by - even the very, very cold pond water.

But this was so easy...all we had to do was not do too much the night before, wake up early, get coffee, drive for half an hour, and we found ourselves stumbling across a neat pile of stones in Thoreau's backyard. And...Free. Zen. I don't think we even had to pay to park.



As we were trying to follow the "Heart Healthy Trail", I'm pretty sure we only made it about halfway before veering off and getting lost. This ended up working out though, as we happened to veer off towards the site of Thoreau's Cabin. There, I read two things that stuck with me. The first was big and right at the head of the path up to the cabin site. It's one of the most iconic quotes from the book:

"I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to confront only the essential facts of life. And see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." 

This stuck out for a few reasons. First, it reminded me of a project I had to do in eleventh grade. It was our "Thoreau Project", and the idea was to choose a way we would "live deliberately". I decided to walk to school for a few days, which was about three miles and took about an hour. An odd choice, but I remember wanting to make a conscious decision to do something that I wouldn't do otherwise. When was I ever going to decide to wake up an hour earlier to walk my ass to school for an hour with my backpack and books? And that was my three days of deliberate living, and when I really confronted the essential facts of jay-walking, and learned what life had to teach me about appreciating how many other ways we have to get places in the morning besides walking.

The V.

The second thought this quote conjured was that I had been doing the exact opposite of living deliberately since I moved to Boston. I'd gotten stuck in that V between the Red line and the Green Line, and I was letting my time in one of the most beautiful, explorable places in the US go to waste. I could have made moves, but there was always some reason I didn't. Back home we explore the city get out into nature a good bit, but everyone has cars and it's the summertime (In the winter we live deliberately around various fire pits and in various living rooms, going through the Panera drive thru and not having to get out of the car to get mac and cheese).
Boston is surrounded by forests and state parks and mountain ranges that, in that moment, I was furious I hadn't already explored more of. If made the deliberate decision to walk to school at 6:30am which meant I had to wake up BEFORE six in the morning, why not take a drive with my friends with a few more hours to sleep in and a destination I was actually excited about?
What I needed to do was to stop letting everything that comes with living my life in Boston be an excuse to not make the most of living in Boston; to find a way to shake off whatever angst or seasonal depression that comes along and focus on the essential facts of life, and learn whatever I can from living it.
Then I caught sight of a two word phrase carved into the placard for Thoreau's Cabin:

"Simply Simplify"

And that so succinctly stated exactly the thought I was trying to form in such a perfect, cosmic way I took the hint, and it has stuck with me since then.

We finished the hike just as the sun set, and it was a very poetic finish. We tossed the football a bit, admired the sky and I geeked over some ducks (I'm a fan, ducks are hugely overrated). And we made the half hour drive back to our bubble in Boston.

Since then, I'd like to think I've actually managed to change the attitudes that were preventing me from living "deliberately". I've made a point to get out into New England and even just out into the city of Boston, but over time the idea spread into aspects of my life I wasn't even thinking of when I saw my little catch phrase at Thoreau's Cabin.

This whole long spiel (they won't all be this long I imagine) has been aimed at laying out what I'm choosing to write about and why it matters to me. This will be a compilation of my various attempts to live deliberately and "simply". I can't exactly do what Thoreau did and live-in-a-cabin live "simply", but the idea is to try to go out get as much as I can out of it life by not letting negativity cloud what's important...as I prepare to graduate from college and am forced to become a real person. There it is.

Conclusions are my biggest weakness, so I'll finish out with a quote that I think applies from probably the most positive human force on the planet, Lil B:

Shouts out to everybody that's here for learning and love and trying to find their way. I mean, shit. I mean, shoot. We're all trying to find our way.

Em+