I’m back again in the town near Walden Pond, back again with the two gentle dogs in the house-that-was-once-a-barn among the leaf-shedding trees. It’s been one year since I came the first time. That same sense of serenity landed while I was still in the taxi as the highway bringing me out of Boston gave way to woodsy country roads. Is it okay if I call it a thin place, I wonder?
Last time I was here, the question came to my mind one morning: Is this a thin place? I’d heard the expression somewhere before but didn’t quite know what it meant. I had some sense of it as a place of mystical importance. The feeling I was having in this place last year might have been merely some calming in my nervous system—the mildness of the weather, the rustling of drying leaves, the steady dispositions of these dogs.
But the thing is, that same morning I had the thought that I might be in a thin place, I happened to take the train to Concord. And in Concord, I happened to pop into a bookstore, where they happened to have Thin Places by Kerri ní Dochartaigh on display.
I wrote this piece about Thoreau when I was here last year. It’s free this week for anyone to read in full.
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