Walden

In mid-winter, during a string of cloudy, dreary days, with the snow piled high and the cold lingering on, I like to catch up on my reading. I often turn to the classics that I read many years ago. Henry David Thoreau’s, WALDEN is one of them.

Though his writing is sometimes difficult to grasp, Thoreau’s words, written in 1854, continue to resonate with me: “In Wilderness is the preservation of the world,” he wrote. Those words were important in Thoreau’s day; they are even more important today.

Thoreau lived for a time in a cabin in the woods on Walden Pond and wrote: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front 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.”

So I sit and read and ponder the layers of meaning in Thoreau’s writing, and their application to today’s frantic world.

THE OLD TIMER SAYS: Listen to the views of others, but trust your own as well.

WRITING WORKSHOP: The dates for my writing workshop at The Clearing in Door
County for 2010 are August 8-14. Contact www.theclearing.org for further information.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

Oakwood East Community Center, Madison. Saturday, February 13, 9:30 a.m. (Delta Kappa Gamma—Educational fraternity) (Stories from the One-Room School)

Eau Claire Farm Show, Eau Claire Indoor Sports Center, March 3, 11:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. (Stories From The Land)

Aldo Leopold celebration, Lake Geneva Public Library, March 6 (time to be announced). (Old Farm and Blue Shadows Farm)

Wisconsin Studio, Overture Center, Madison, WI, Sunday, March 21, 1:30 p.m. (Old
Farm)

UW-Baraboo, “Add Learning to Your Life” workshop for those 55 and older. March 25, 11:30 a.m. (Stories From the Land) Call 608-355-5234 for further information.

Westfield Public Library. March 31, 12:45-1:30. (Ames County Novels)