Walden Pond. In my life, in the life of Thorovians, in the lives of readers of the writetings of Henry David Thoreau, it has a special place. And from my experience it is not just for Americans but for readers everywhere who, I found as I would casually chat with a hiker, were coming from as far away as Japan. What would bring them here.

The pond, by itself would not. It is a beautiful body of water but not so unusual, a kettle hole pond 100 feet deep and created by the retreating ice in the last ice age. But it was definitely a place to get lost in thought as you wandered closer and closer to the site of Thoreau’s cabin and then your mind would drift to words that had stayed with you from reading his unique prose.

New England is special, no question about that. I have wandered from Japan to Sochie, Russia. Perhaps it is a reward for familiarity and growing up among trees and ponds, and grasses like these.

The pond is not just special, it is Walden Pond and seeing it brings back so many words, phrases, paragraphs, chapters and books. And I have had the honor of adding two to that library with photographs from over ten years of — I think of it as hunting — sometimes to capture just the odor of New England, but other times to capture that which I have seen nowhere else, and in somecases, images I think no one will ever see the likes of anywhere no matter how long the wait. Of course I will never know, but that is what I feel.

The water-shields at Wyman’s meadow, or the sunset over the ice storm from the Fairhaven Cliffs.

Well, it is a big world, but it means not just being there, but being there the one time in a year, a decade or a life time. With a camera.