I have never been to Walden Pond.

That confession is an easy admission. I've admitted maybe too many things on this blog but few bother me. This next one though leaves me feeling uneasy and I worry about people finding out. I may have kind of led people to believe otherwise. And so I pause a moment before telling you this:

I have never read Henry David Thoreau's Walden.

It's one of those books I should have already read, that I should know, and that should be a foundation for me. Yet, I haven't read it. I've started it several times and I've read sections of it for a class way back in college, enough so that I wrote a good paper about it. I've read of it many times, admiring the book, the writer, and the writers writing about it. All of which is to say that I know Walden by proxy but have never read the damn thing and every time I start reading it (with nothing but the best intentions), I get distracted and intimidated by the task. I quit. I quit. I quit every single time because it feels like too much.

So I'm reading it now one page per night.

Each night before turning out the light, I open Walden and read one page. I follow the last sentence onto the next page but stop as soon as I can. The next night I re-read from the top of the page (or the bottom of the previous page) and end when I have finished that one page.

It is slow going but what else should a trip to Walden Pond be but slow and deliberate?

At this rate I don't expect to finish Walden until 2019. I hope I make it all the way to the end and maybe turn back to page one and begin again. If nothing else, I hope to enjoy the journey taken slowly as if on foot from Concord to Fitchburg. Going slow, I want to remember that I've long wanted to make my home in a tiny shack near water. For one page a night that's just what I'll be doing. If you need me, I'll be at Walden Pond. Stop by any time.