If you’ve ever been to Walden Pond and Thoreau’s cabin there–you will be touched by how small it all is, how close it seems to the larger world and yet how compact and serene. How very far away. (Unless you happen to be there on a hot summer day when it is packed out with swimmers and children in shitty diapers).

You don’t hear too much about Don Henley and Walden Woods anymore, but this comes as good news today when so much in the world seems wrong–Milestone for Walden Woods:

The staying power of the Walden Woods Project that Henley founded in 1990 is as curious as the enduring appeal of Henry David Thoreau, the cantankerous social activist who holed up in a Concord cabin for two years, wrote ”Walden” and ”Civil Disobedience,” and went on to influence environmentalists and social reformers for more than 150 years. Among those scheduled to appear at today’s dedication are biologist Edward O. Wilson and relatives of luminaries influenced by Thoreau’s work — from Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson to John Muir’s great-grandson to Rachel Carson’s nephew.