I went walking yesterday morning when the sun was high and the sky blue. I walked a new path where trees lined both sides and when I found a patch of wildflowers, calamity set in. Both yesterday and this afternoon were cloudy and hot with the evening becoming sunny and warm.
This morning, Concord, New Hampshire state house.
Recently I've been swimming, finding a certain weightlessness and freedom once under water. I've always found bodies of water of any size constricting in the most unusual way, almost claustrophobic despite the vast space beneath one's feet. In a similar sense that some might be uncomfortable around heights, I feel similar while swimming, uncomfortable and slightly anxious. Yet I enjoy it. The vulnerability allows me to feel more free, more interested in my surroundings, more eager to explore. Floating this evening in the middle of the lake, I heard voices but nobody was within sight. It felt isolating, rural, concerningly empty, yet beautiful and serene.
July 1st, this evening.
Late last week I finished reading American Bloomsbury, a book that interested me as because of it's in-depth research on the Concord, Massachusetts friendships and literary lives of Louisa May Alcott, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorn among a few others. I had mostly read a piece or two from each and while I never lived there and hold no memories, I was born in Concord, Massachusetts, a town of roughly 15,000, west of Boston. The overlaps of each writer in friendship and how society influenced their writing was fascinating. Through the analysis of Thoreau's Walden, I was reminded of why our natural surroundings matter, what peace they bring to us and why they must continue to exist.
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