Bringing Walden Pond Back To My Living Room

A creative coffee table tells a thousand stories

A coffee table two years in the making, waiting for its time to come to life. Photo by Christopher Lancette.

I’m sauntering by the site of Henry David Thoreau’s house (he never called it a cabin) at Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts — diligently picking up all kinds of objects from the ground and depositing them in a nylon bag.

“What are you doing?” my wife, Won-ok, asks me, curiously.

“I don’t know yet” I chirp, plunking some acorns into the bag. “But I will someday!”

My response doesn’t phase her. She’s used to these kinds of retorts from me and she trusts that I will come up with something beautiful. That I won’t junk up our house.

I drop some pinecones into the bag as we mozy from house to pond and back.

I have quite the thing for Thoreau.

He’s my hero, mentor and friend. His Walden answer to the question of why he went to the woods became a mantra for me at a young age, planting the seeds of how I would live my life. It would magnify my love for the awe of nature and even guide me to career choices aimed at protecting it. First with The Trust for Public Land, then The Wilderness Society, and with a whole bunch of writing before and after. I started writing about my own little slice of Walden heaven where I live — on Sligo Creek in…