Southern Musings By Gary Lloyd: My mind travels a path to Massachusetts

On a Saturday in May, my iPhone buzzed with a text message from a former teacher. 

“Will you be in church tomorrow 9:30–10:00ish?” it read. I said yes, wondering if this former teacher wanted to tag along to the morning service, had an idea for a story to cover during that time or something else. 

“I was going to FaceTime you from Walden Pond,” was what he sent back to me.

Wait. What? 

Walden Pond in Massachusetts has long been a bucket-list destination for me, the place where Henry David Thoreau spent two years, two months and two days, and the digital postcard that is FaceTime would have been the next-best option until I can fly north someday. 

I joked that this teacher should spend part of his vacation sending me photos and videos. I even sent that laughing emoji. But the next day at 4 p.m., my iPhone again vibrated. It was a video from the teacher, 30 seconds of showing me inside the replica of Thoreau’s cabin. 

Next came a hilarious 34-second video from Walden Pond, narrated by the teacher who, in part, quipped, “It’s very crowded today. This is like a day-use beach. I’m not sure what Thoreau would think, but I do not think that he would say these people are living deliberately. Wish you were here. Come at a different time other than Memorial Day weekend.” 

Eight photos followed, and several more from his wife, of Thoreau’s home site and inside the nearby museum. 

Imagine traversing the country bound for Canada and ensuring that a former student sees as much as he can of a place that has long inspired him. What a teacher. What a friend. What a selling point to make that trip myself. 

A month later, literally to the day, another text message came through. “Are you around this morning? We come bearing gifts.” 

The teacher and his wife showed up to my front porch with a T-shirt from Walden Pond, a guidebook and more booklets all about this historic place. We stood there for an hour, talking about their trip to Walden Pond and Canada. 

Their storytelling made me feel as if I was there with them, despite standing on a Trussville porch in June. But I will travel there one day, no doubt. Their stories only intensified that desire.

I was scrolling through the photos the teacher sent to me for this column, and one from inside the library or museum on-site, with a passage from “Walden,”  caught my eye.

“I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side … and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!” 

That’s a shortened version of a long conclusion to “Walden,” so I read the conclusion again. Two sentences after that passage came this: “I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

Words first published about a place in 1854, still inspiring and leading today. I can’t wait to see it myself.

Gary Lloyd is the author of six books and a contributing writer to the Cahaba Sun.