Afterward I retreated up the path to find the site of Thoreau's cabin. I had hiked it once almost ten years ago with my husband on a rainy October day. This morning was bright and sunny, though the cool shade of the trees provided a restive respite. I wandered the trail under dappled leaves, catching glimpses of the shimmering water which was almost turquoise. The path was mostly empty and the dirt path ate the sound of my footsteps. I walked through the forest, stopping frequently to enjoy the trees, the sticks, to watch the fish in the water. The path meandered along the shore's edge, gently rolling down, then up, then down again. I cross the bridge past the meadow and stumbled on a small cove that had been discovered by a young family. A simple wooden arrow pointed to the house site where Thoreau's cabin once stood.
I walked up the hill into a clearing with a pile of rocks, two foot high stone pillars marking the foundation. I stood in the clearing and listened for birds. I heard crickets and the hum of bugs. In the time I stood there several families entered and left the site. Some lingered long enough to read the signs. One father told his son to "put a rock on the pile," which the sign said was a tradition started by the Thoreau Society to represent the idea that while the cabin may not remain, Thoreau's ideas live on. I couldn't help but think that Thoreau might have preferred that we each instead remove a rock, until his woods were as unmarked as if no one had ever been there.
Yet the idea of one's legacy as a pile of rocks is powerful: the notion that small pebbles, placed one at a time over a long, sustained period of reflection can build itself into a physical presence, something real and enduring is comforting. Rome wasn't built in a day, and you have to start somewhere, but too often we think we will fail and never start at all. I know sometimes I get intimidated by my ideas, want to write and get my thoughts down, but don't. Yet on a day to day basis the work is as simple as placing a pebble. If we can focus on that who knows what might get built, what ideas born.
The sign next to the rock pile quote Thoreau that he "came 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." The rocks stand as a nice testament: challenging us to live each day in a way that places another pebble on the pile, motivating us ourselves to take small steps forward. Do something every day that leaves an impression, because even if it is not organized into a foundation, it represents you were alive.
