Excuse my borrowing of Thoreau’s words to title this column … but if that isn’t an apt passage for being a writer I’m not sure what is. But it’s more than just being a writer, his words are evocative of the human experience — at least if that experience involves an examined life.

As homage to HDT, I call my teeny-tiny home and wild and unruly double-size yard — Walden II.

I’m in a Thoreau state of mind today … it’s a good thing I’m alone. Well, not completely. I just ran into a snake outside, and the birds are plentiful.

Mr. Bluejay looks for peanuts at the bird bath.

“To be awake is to be alive.”

Tufted titmouse contemplates his next move.

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it ….”

Madame Mockingbird stops for a drink.

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”

Birds of dissimilar feathers (a grackle and a mourning dove) stake their perches at the bird bath.

“Only that day dawns to which we are awake.”

Madame le Cardinale chows down.

I was lucky enough to visit Concord Massachusetts before I moved away from Boston in 2004. I didn’t have a car at the time, and a friend gave me the great gift of driving me to Walden Pond and walking and sitting with me patiently while I passed a couple of hours in near silence. If you’ve never been, you should go. I’m not the kind of person who believes in traveling to places for their allegedly transformative effects, but Walden was imbued with magic. Or perhaps it was just Thoreau’s words rambling ’round in my head that day that helped imagine it so.

MC at the site of Thoreau's Walden cabin.