Sampling Thoreau

Part 1: Economy

Inspired by rereading Thoreau’s Walden for the first time in 30 years, I am writing a series of essays—an attempt to sample Thoreau, and swing the rhythm. I want to honor the young idealist with echoes of his aphoristic style and, at the same time, challenge his lofty ideals with the experience of an older woman. Click here to read part 2.

When I turned 50, my mother gave me $200 for my birthday. I bid it all on a black leather doctor’s bag I found on e-bay and very quickly received an email saying I’d “won” it. My husband Andy and I still refer to the bag as the German seller listed it: “doktorattache.” At the time, I imagined myself using it as what my mother would call a day bag to carry on the train to New York. Now, every Friday night we load the car with my doktorattache, and Andy’s shopping bags full of clothes and tools, and head southeast toward the New Bedford Harbor.  When the road splits south of Boston, we stay right and are soon up to speed. I feel an intimacy with those on the road with us, as I do with strangers speeding down the track with me on the last outbound subway until morning—the anonymity; the neither here-nor thereness; the strange desire to overshoot my stop and keep traveling—not quiet desperation, just a sense of direction. When we finally turn on the harbor bridge, we have been on the road just over an hour.