This post was published in the Nature Writing online magazine dated 11th August
The past few months in the nourish-n-cherish household have been a whirling vortex of activity. I enjoyed most of it, but one night I felt exhausted. A sense of being spread too thin washed over me. I tried chuckling at Bilbo Baggins’ famous quote in The Lord of the Rings, ‘like butter scraped over too much bread’, but what came out was a whimper.
I walked over to the window, and gazed outside. The view of a spring night with its flowering plants and trees bursting with young leaves is beautiful. The faint moonlight breaking through the clouds above, makes for a serene scene, and made me reach longingly for Thoreau at Walden Pond, though it was well past midnight.
Henry David Thoreau built himself a cabin in the woods near Walden Pond, and lived there for 2 years 2 months and 2 days. What emerged from this minimalist living of Thoreau’s was the great writings, that to this day offers us wisdom. (In case you run away with this notion of my acquiring wisdom, I assure you, that I am in no such danger. I am still firmly rooted in the hustle and bustle of the human village.). The book I read was a graphic book meant to introduce Walden Pond to those who draw like me (stick or easy sketches – the actual sketches were of course better than any I produce). The words and captions belonged to Thoreau, and I enjoyed the drawings – minimalist sketches to match a minimalist lifestyle.
In the book, Thoreau refers to the calming influence of observing nature, and how if you stay still in the woods, you will notice things that are otherwise not revealed. I let the book flop on my tired torso, and threw my mind back to the day the husband & I managed to get a day to ourselves in the wilderness. We went on a strenuous hike up to Upper Yosemite Falls. It was a beautiful day to hike. Several cascades trickled across our paths, and we jumped joyously across them. The water trickles are the highlight of that hike, and we thoroughly enjoyed splashing ourselves with the fresh water from the snow melt. It was steep going, and we huffed and puffed our way upwards.
The trailhead helpfully said, that one must not under-estimate the hike, and that it would take 5-6 hours for average hikers. The husband, in his typical fashion, said it would only take 4 hours. I haha-ed somewhat helplessly at this optimism that has been my bait and mate, and said 6 hours it is. It took us 5 and 1/2. So there.
I was keeping my eyes out for some wildlife, and I was disappointed to find that apart from some squirrels, there really wasn’t any other wildlife of note. Of course, animals have learnt to keep away from wild humans. I remember reading somewhere that the only large animals to survive the Anthropocene stampede are those that are domesticated. All others, we have managed to slowly wipe out.
On the hike, it was a perfect day, the skies were a brilliant blue, the weather neither hot nor cold, anywhere you pointed the phone, you got a pretty enough picture ( I paid for this by spending an hour deleting 98% of these photos). The steps and switchbacks were exacting a toll on the calf muscles that I paid for the next day. Then we turned a bend, and there in front of us was the spectacular Yosemite falls crashing and thundering its way down to the Merced river. Loud crashes probably meant large shelves of ice chipping and crashing into the depths below. The mists created rainbows. It was marvelous. One could stand there for hours watching the waterfall.
It was mighty lucky for us to enjoy Yosemite like that. For just a few days later, a storm engulfed the region, and Yosemite valley was evacuated, several rivers ran swollen and we heard of tragic mishaps and washed away roads. I thought also about how on our recent trip to the mountains, we had narrowly missed a snow storm. There is something eerie about knowing how close one was to mishap. I was yanked back to the present by the goose-bumps on my skin, and I held the Walden at Thoreau in my hands as if looking at it for the first time. Maybe that is what the wise mean when they say ‘Enjoy the present’, and ‘Savor the moment’ and so on. I opened Thoreau slowly, mentally leaving the human village behind, and entered a sanctuary of peace and calm. I retreated into the book for several blissful minutes, like a deer in the meadow at a rare moment.
Thoreau had written about Walden Pond itself:
“A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful feature. It is Earth’s eye, looking into which the beholder measures the depths of his own nature. “
I dipped my feet into the lake of sleep, thought of what a lousy metaphor that was, and drifted off.
Nourish-n-Cherish 