I was reminded of the many passages in which Thoreau describes how close the train track was to his cabin in the woods, and how the train crews were so used to seeing him walking near the tracks, that they probably thought he was a railroad employee. Of course he used the railroad as his metaphor for the catapulting of the country and the civilized world toward an industrialized and less natural future. Since the rest of the trail was blocked due to shoreline restoration work, I started back down the path the way I'd come, but stopped to sit on a rock by the water's edge and opened my copy of Walden . Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth. It needs no fence.
Nations come and go without defiling it.
A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky. On land only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by the wind. I see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of light.