Episode 1/Takin A Walk on Walden Pond

Buzz Knight:

Some weeks ago, I took a trip to the great city of Chicago to walk, to contemplate the world we live in. On the trip, one day turned to night, some 15 miles and roughly 30,000 steps later, I saw a story there was to tell. The story was about a simple act that has saved us. It saved us all at various moments. Taking a walk on our own, or with a companion, fury or human. The act of taking a walk is such a beautiful thing. I’m Buzz Knight and welcome to the first episode of Takin a Walk, a journey that will take us to many places with many different people. As I got excited about the possibilities, I thought there’s no better place to start the journey than Walden Pond. Let’s go talk to the executive director of the Walden Woods Project, Kathi Anderson, and see what she thinks of the idea. It’s so nice to see you, Kathi. How’s everything going with you today?

Kathi Anderson:

Oh, it’s a beautiful day here and everything is going great, Buzz. It’s great to see you too.

Buzz Knight:

So I know for every nonprofit, this has been an incredibly difficult time during obviously, this pandemic. And I just wanted to get an update, how are things going at the Walden Woods Project?

Kathi Anderson:

Well, you’re absolutely right that most nonprofits have faced some challenges indeed, in terms of fundraising and adapting programs to virtual presentations and whatever. We’re no different, but everything is going really well. We have a lot of loyal supporters who have stood by us for over 30 years, who continue to support us financially. And I think that overall, we’re doing well.

Kathi Anderson:

I would say that COVID has actually opened up some opportunities for us, interestingly. I think if there’s a couple of silver linings to COVID for the Walden Woods Project, they are number one, people are coming out to reconnect with nature as never before. And you’ve probably heard reports on TV about this, that our national parks are having incredibly high visitation. And I think that the pandemic has caused people to reflect a lot on their own lives. And they are starting to think about their place in the world and also their place in nature. And so consequently, our trail systems in Walden Woods have had higher use than ever before. It’s really gratifying to see people come out and appreciate this beautiful historic landscape in numbers that we’ve never seen before.

Kathi Anderson:

So that is one, plus the other is, the adaptation of many of our programs to virtual presentations has opened our organization up to a whole new audience across the globe. It’s phenomenal how virtual programming attracts people from different countries. And I was just talking with our education director just yesterday and we made a list of all the different countries where people live, who have participated in our virtual programs. And I think we’re up to about 15 and 20 different countries. So that is really great because we can cast a wider net about those legacy talking about on a global level, his influences in terms of contemporary environmental and social reform issues. So we’re engaging a bigger audience while at the same time still continuing to engage our local audience. So I view that as a plus and we’re going to continue to do virtual programming and definitely for that reason, even when we’re able to fully restart our on-site programming.

Buzz Knight:

That’s fantastic news to hear and it’s fantastic to hear how people have sought the tranquility of Walden Woods and Walden Pond during this time and other tremendous places as well. So I know me personally, I live in the backyard here and I’m fortunately very close, so I can go visit and take in the beauty. But I actually grew different appreciation for places as well because of just being here seven days a week and really seeking the outdoors, and the beauty, and the ability to just be out there, taking it all in and taking a walk. So yeah, I can identify with that.

Kathi Anderson:

Well, we need these places obviously, in our lives. And it really brings home the importance of conservation and land protection very, very clearly. If we don’t protect what we love then what we love is not going to be there for us in the future and certainly not for future generations. I’m a firm subscriber to the approach of protecting half of our earth and we’ve worked closely with Dr. E. O. Wilson and his half earth project. And we are part and parcel of the natural world and basically by saving nature, we’re saving ourselves. And I think people, more and more are beginning to recognize that.

Kathi Anderson:

And certainly climate change has brought home the importance of conservation as well, because the impacts that we are going to see and are already seeing from a changing climate are going to shrink our available open space. And it’s going to be even more necessary for us too to take action, to set aside places in the natural world and what we feel able to protect very soon will be gone. I believe that totally about Walden Woods and we see a lot of pressures of development and population growth and all of those things, we’re all too familiar with that really squeeze out habitat, impact biodiversity, cause extinctions. And in fact, impact climate change in a very dramatically negative way because when we lose forest land, we lose opportunities for carbon sequestration, which are so important. So I think that the COVID crisis has, in a lot of ways, awakened people to these challenges we face.

Buzz Knight:

Totally agree, Kathi. Totally agree. So I wanted to run something by you, I’ve been thinking about here. I was on a recent trip in the great city of Chicago. And I know there’s many great walking cities as you know, Boston is one and Chicago, and New York. And there’s others certainly better, really great places to go and explore, and people watch, and just take in the beauty of a day and a cityscape. Just as there is amazing places, such as Walden to do it, that are more remote and taking in nature. And while I was on that walk, I thought of this idea for a podcast series called Takin a Walk, where I can really shine a light on a great location, a great guest, whether it be a friend, a new friend, you sort of name it. And really in the mindset of how taking a walk and mindfulness is so critical, especially in this day and age.

Buzz Knight:

So as I thought about it, I thought the only place to really start this is the rightful place of Walden for everything that it stands for. And obviously what Henry David stands for. It’s just too natural and too special a place and too special to me, so I love the idea of starting the series there. And you have this amazing curator that I’ve read about and read his work named Jeffrey Cramer. I think it would be fascinating to go take a walk with Jeffrey at Walden Pond. So I don’t mean to catch you off guard here, but what do you think?

Kathi Anderson:

Well, I think that’s a terrific idea. I love to walk with Jeff around Walden Pond because he is so passionate about Thoreau and the transcendentalists. As you know, Jeff has edited many of Thoreau works and we laughingly tease Jeff and say, oh, any day of Thoreau’s life, Jeff will know what Thoreau did. He has really, really a wealth of knowledge about Henry David Thoreau, so it’s a lot of fun to be in the actual place with Jeff and hear him talk about Henry’s time there. First of all, I think that’s a great idea and I think you’ll both really enjoy it.

Buzz Knight:

That’s great. I really look forward to doing it and I’m going to do it. And I really appreciate you hearing me out on it and I’ll keep you posted, obviously. And I really wanted to thank you and everybody in your organization during these challenging times. Juliet and Jeff, and Sarah and others, obviously that I don’t know who have really kept the focus of the great work that the Walden Woods Project does. So as somebody who is a great believer in all of your work and their work, I wanted to say, thank you for that.

Kathi Anderson:

Well, I want to thank you Buzz, as we all do. You have been such a great friend and supporter now for many, many, many years and just a wonderful, wonderful colleague and friend. So I’m delighted to hear about this new project and I just think it’s going to be fantastic.

Buzz Knight:

Thank you, Kathi. On part two of episode one of Taking a Walk, Buzz talked to Jeffrey Cramer, the curator of the Walden Woods Project. Well, Jeff, it’s so nice to meet you and it’s so nice to be taking a walk with you.

Jeffrey Cramer:

It’s my pleasure, Buzz.

Buzz Knight:

So in the course of your busy day, how often do you get to take a walk here?

Jeffrey Cramer:

Strangely, very rarely. I’m busy in the library with archival work and things like that, and helping with researchers and students. So very rarely do I actually get the time like, we’re doing now to get a nice walk around the pond.

Buzz Knight:

And how did you first end up at the Walden Woods Project?

Jeffrey Cramer:

I’m a trained librarian archivist and also an independent Thoreau scholar. And it was actually a very strange coincidence, I was working for the Boston Public Library for over 20 years and had been looking for something different. And I was working on my first book, Thoreau related book called Thoreau on Freedom. And the editor said I should come out to the Walden Wood Project and see somebody here who might give some less, or known quotations for the book, just to give it something that nobody else had. And two days before I came out here to get the quotations, the woman who was in charge of rare books in those days came and said, Jeff, you should meet this woman we just hired, she used to be the curator at the Thoreau Institute. And so when I came out here and the man handed me a disc with a few quotations on it, I said, “Do you have an opening?” And he said, “Yeah, are you interested?”

Jeffrey Cramer:

So they had done a nationwide search and didn’t find the right candidate. I had been looking to get out of Boston for years, couldn’t find the right job. And here I was a Thoreau scholar and a trained archivist walking into their doors saying, do you have an opening? And he showed me around, I just absolutely fell in love with not only the library, but what the Walden Woods Project represented and what it was trying to do. So sent in a letter, invited for an interview. And was coming from my interview and… You know how, when you really want something, you say something really stupid and blow it, so I was really afraid of that happening.

Jeffrey Cramer:

So I was about five minutes away from approaching the Walden Wood Project for my interview. And as you might know, or as your listeners might know, our founder was Don Henley from the Eagles. And so I said, if I hear the Eagles on the radio, this will be my job. And as soon as I said that Hotel California started on the radio and as I pulled into the parking lot, we had gravel parking lot in those days. You could hear the tires on the gravel and the song Hotel California ended as I came out of the car, so just coming out of car, I knew that was my job. And about a week later I had the offer.

Buzz Knight:

I have goosebumps.

Jeffrey Cramer:

Yeah. I actually do too.

Buzz Knight:

It’s amazing. And in a time where you more often hear about the fact of joy and what people have in their work, you are somebody that I perceive has incredible joy about your work.

Jeffrey Cramer:

I do. The idea of having a position where you are spending your day talking and working with authors that you love Thoreau, but also, Emerson, Margaret Fuller, the Alcotts, all of them. It is a joy. And to get to talk to people about Thoreau, as part of my work, I mean, who could think of anything better?

Buzz Knight:

So when you think of the time that we’re in and you think of the importance of mindfulness, and I believe mindfulness and walking certainly go hand in hand. How important do you think it is today and specifically how important is Walden around mindfulness?

Jeffrey Cramer:

Well, I mean, Thoreau is certain an important author, when you think about mindfulness. Back in his day, what he would refer to would be deliberation. The idea of deliberating, to think about things, so that’s basically the same concept. To be mindful of what you’re doing, how you’re doing it, how it affects the people around you. So I think is a very important concept and I think people often miss that aspect of Thoreau. Oh, I’m sorry, they talk about deliberation, but they don’t jump ahead to how we refer to it now as mindfulness and how important those ideas that Thoreau was writing about in relation to how we conduct our lives, how much that relates to how we should be living our life today.

Buzz Knight:

And when we think also of solitude-

Which has been so much a part of what’s going on around COVID. How do we cherish solitude when we’re here and really embrace that?

Jeffrey Cramer:

Well, I think part of it is just to be content with who you are and what you offer. So Thoreau said, and amazingly, I’m very bad at quoting, but something to the fact if I stand by myself, I’m never alone. So the idea that in solitude, you’re not necessarily alone. And also the idea that you could be in a crowd full of people and be lonely. So where you are and the number of people around you, or not around you does not make much difference in that concept, that idea. So for a lot of people, I know this period of being somewhat isolated has been very difficult, as a born introvert, it’s been heaven. So it all depends which way you view things.

Buzz Knight:

Did Henry David go for walks with others here, or was he… I mean, he was obviously a solo act.

Jeffrey Cramer:

Right, right. So he did, people wanted to go on walks with him, friends particularly. He didn’t necessarily enjoy that. So if you think about what was Thoreau’s, I don’t want to say job, but what was he did? He studied the world around him. He studied nature. He studied human interaction, or the human condition and he wanted to think about it. So a walk in the woods, or oaring on the river, or whatever he chose to do for three, or four hours a day, was part of his work. And he would say things like, you would not necessarily watch a doctor do surgery, or follow a lawyer into a courthouse, you don’t do those things. When a person’s working, you let them work. So usually he found that when somebody accompanied him on a walk, it was more of an annoyance than anything else.

Buzz Knight:

But he also embraced this community.

Jeffrey Cramer:

He did, he did.

Buzz Knight:

This whole area and community of special people, right?

Jeffrey Cramer:

Yes. And he was always a part of his community. So a lot of people tend to think of Thoreau, as a hermit, or somebody who went away from society. But that was never the case even when he lived here at Walden Pond, he was going into town almost every day. And he’d visit with people, he’d visit with friends and family, gossip with the farmers, get his newspaper from the post office, so he was always part of that. And he said at one point that he lived in two worlds, nature and the post office meaning the natural world, but also the social world, society.

Jeffrey Cramer:

And if you for instance, think of Walden as a pilgrimage for Thoreau, the most important thing on any pilgrimage is the idea that you go and you learn and then you share it. You come back and you share it. So Thoreau was very clear that he wanted to help, as he said, in Walden, wake his neighbors up. So he will never went away from society, society is always integral to who he was and how he conducted himself in the world.

Buzz Knight:

How about entertainment? Was there a sense of entertainment in the community, music as an example?

Jeffrey Cramer:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, I mean, Thoreau liked to play his flute, so I mean, he made his own music. In fact, there are talks in his journal about going out into the pond and playing his flute and playing with the echoes of the flute. So I like to think of Thoreau as being one of the early Jazz musicians out here just improvising, totally. But yeah, there would be entertainment, entertainment in those days would be often going to a lecture. So some forms of adult education and lecturing, but also musical performances, theatrical performances, things like that. Thoreau for him, it was mostly going to lectures.

Buzz Knight:

Do you think in light of the times that there’s a greater appreciation for the beauty of Walden and places like it? So when people are looking to get outdoors and take a walk that they find, or rediscover places such as this.

Jeffrey Cramer:

I think so. I mean, certainly during the pandemic, the number of people visiting natural places, such as Walden, or a national park, or any kind of outdoor space, a rail trail, whatever it is. There are a lot of people taking advantage of that and trying to find something in this natural world of ours.

Buzz Knight:

Which I think is such a great byproduct of what’s going on.

Jeffrey Cramer:

Absolutely.

Buzz Knight:

Because if we forget about the beauty of places such as this, then terrible things can happen.

Jeffrey Cramer:

Yes. Our connection to the natural world helps us be better people, helps us live our way in a more positive way in the world. And so somebody like Thoreau, who said he was part and parcel of nature, he was a natural creature. Did not set himself apart as something different from nature, so he wasn’t necessarily different from the fish in the pond, or the trees or whatever, he was part of that world. So if you think about being part of something, it’s harder to destroy it. You don’t want to cause harm, if you’re part of something. It’s only when something is foreign, something’s different, something is something you can’t relate to, that we feel we can do something that is not necessarily as beneficial. So if you think about how we treated the natural world as something different from us, it’s why we destroy it. We can use it, we can abuse it, we can not take care of it. But once you are part of that world and you realize you’re interconnected in this with it, then you’re going to do your most to protect it and help it.

Buzz Knight:

What do you think he would’ve thought of the discussions on climate change of today?

Jeffrey Cramer:

That is actually a hard question because for Thoreau in his day, and because some of the things that we are experiencing are things he could never, ever have anticipated, or thought of. But for Thoreau, the world, the universe took care of itself. So things were constantly influx, things were constantly changing. So that if you let it alone, Thoreau believed, then it would eventually repair itself, or you’d have something different. Not to say better, not to say worse, but just something different.

Jeffrey Cramer:

So if he were here in his mindset for the mid 19th century, looking at climate change, he might say, just step back, it’ll take care of itself. Now for somebody like Thoreau, that also meant that the natural course of things could actually eradicate human beings and that was also whether a part of the natural course of things. So he talked about that for any group, or thing that is being destroyed, it is bad for that group, or thing, but other things will take its place. So for Thoreau, I think he would actually look at the world as if it changed to a point where human beings could no longer live on this planet, that would be just one part of the cycle that has changed and is gone, but other things would probably carry on. Not a very human-centric position.

Buzz Knight:

Jeffrey, really, I can’t thank you enough for taking a walk here with me.

Jeffrey Cramer:

Sure.

Buzz Knight:

So as we close, what things would you like the audience to know about the great work that the Walden Woods Project is doing that you want people to know about?

Jeffrey Cramer:

Well, mostly that we have multiple missions that sort of cross over and work together, but not only are we working to preserve the land associated with Henry David Thoreau, but also that we have our education department. So we’re trying to help people usually students, to learn about Thoreau and try to separate some of the myths that they are always hearing. And then of course, we have the research library where I work, where again, we are helping people all the time come to a better understanding of who Henry David Thoreau, actually was and what he actually was writing about.

Buzz Knight:

Thank you, Jeffrey.

Jeffrey Cramer:

My pleasure, Buzz.

Buzz Knight:

Takin A Walk is available wherever you get your podcasts.

Buzz Knight is an established media executive with a long history of content creation and multi-platform distribution.

After a successful career as a Radio Executive, he formed Buzz Knight Media which focuses on strategic guidance and the development of new original content.