Some years ago, I left behind the depression, emptiness, indifference, and passive abuse of our long-suffered Thanksgiving Day family gatherings. Although it was a difficult choice at the time, I’ve never regretted it. Friends often extend invitations to their festive tables, but I’ve chosen the new tradition of fasting on Thanksgiving. Instead of an institutional family sadness laced with grievances, it has become a day of prayer and reflection—a time for gratitude.
I was excited when the forecast called for a nor’easter carrying between five and eleven inches of snow. And there was plenty of it late in the afternoon and early evening. The storm was so fierce, and the roads were dangerous enough that we turned back on our second trip to Thorne Pond and retreated to the comfort of home.
The snow was wet and turned to rain, leaving us mostly with a thin, crispy layer of frozen snow and large patches of ice.
The two videos above were recorded yesterday morning. One was a joke to a friend in which I said I’d changed my mind and that we were coming for dinner. I am sharing it because it captures the crunch of the forest floor and the playfulness of Samwise and Emily when the snow was just beginning. It was daybreak, cold and raw, but the air crackled with the promise of a good storm.
With the crowds gone and if we are blessed to find no other cars at the pond, we’ve taken to doing one-mile laps early in the day and after nightfall. It is a meditative place when all is quiet and all is well.
Our local beavers remain active but should not be. They should be cozied up in their homes by now. But the cold weather was late in arriving, and autumn has been unusually warm. I’m sure they’ll get around to it soon enough, though.
When we used to stay for the winter, as ice formed on the pond, the beavers disappeared, replaced by a couple of playful otters. But that was five years ago, and I don’t know if the otters still come to eat and play.
The only other visitors to the pond yesterday were a half dozen common mergansers. If they are by the frozen reeds at the water’s edge when we pass, they put on a dramatic show of exasperated bother and flutter as they beat their wings and skim across the water’s surface. But they only do this once. After our first lap, they know we are there. Instead, they appear to mirror our laps by swimming along with us.
With six days to go, we are as busy as those beavers: cleaning, organizing, packing, and plotting. I added a new stop only yesterday; our coddiwomple continues to transform. I’m hoping to hike Monument Mountain in the Berkshires. It’s easy enough, with only 900 feet of elevation in three miles, but I’m not sure we’ll have enough time. Our first few days will be busy with a dizzying number of stops.
I am drawn to the peak by its significance in the literary world. Not only was it sacred to the Mohicans, but it was also where Herman Melville (31) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (46), who each had just moved to Lenox, finally met (August 5, 1850). They were among a group of ten on a hike (which included Oliver Wendell Holmes). They were on their way to having a champagne picnic atop Monument Mountain when a summer rain storm interrupted. The hiking party took shelter in a cave. And that’s where Herman fell in love, it’s reported, with Nathaniel. (Hawthorne had recently published The Scarlett Letter.)
Melville was busy writing Moby Dick at the time and used the view from his writing room window at his Arrowhead Farm for inspiration. It looked out on the great hump of Mount Greylock, which he believed looked like a whale.
Soon after that meeting between Herman and Nathaniel, Melville wrote of Hawthorne, “A man of a deep and noble nature has seized me in this seclusion. His wild witch voice rings through me, or in softer cadences, I seem to hear it in the songs of the hillside birds that sing in the larch trees at my window.”
Melville even dedicated Moby Dick to Hawthorne, “In Token of My Admiration for his Genius, This Book is Inscribed to Nathanial Hawthorne.”
Monument Mountain is the type of stop that excites me. We’d put in miles while also walking in the footsteps of history. It would be a perfect hike for us, as long as we have the time and the weather cooperates.
Post Script
Thank you for your responses over the last 48 hours. Your family Thanksgiving traditions, memories, rituals, and menu were a joy to read. Your comments had so much heart.
