My family and I live in Westview Estates and our house has a view of Mrs. Beem’s Pond. My husband and I waited for years for this house to go on the market, and when it didn’t, we reached out to the owners ourselves. We were so happy to settle in our dream home in a town we loved near friends and family we have visited for 25 years.
I rock on my porch a lot and wave to my neighbors who stop to talk or drive by and beep. During the pandemic, I would often just admire the view of the pond and think about Henry David Thoreau and his writings about his time on Walden Pond.
Many of his ideas are way more radical in every direction than I support, but a few things he stood for have hit home for me these last few years.
If you remember Thoreau, you might remember how he left society and lived alone in the woods for a few years and refused to pay taxes. Of course, this idea resonated with me when I was a libertarian, single professional in my 20s!
Now that I am a mom, home owner, and neighbor, my political views have shifted toward the middle.
I believe in:
- small government
- lean budgets
- shared services
- and the benefits of paying the government to administer services that keep us all safe, healthy, and active.
I like having a:
- hard working department of public works
- a dedicated volunteer fire department and emergency medical services team
- a strong recreation program with our own recreation center
- recycling and bulk pick-up opportunities
- animal control experts
- code enforcement officials
- public parks that are maintained
- and so many other benefits of sharing a community together.
I read that Thoreau might have emerged from his multiple trips to the woods with an appreciation of the need for a balance between nature (civil liberties) and society.
I also emerged from my libertarian 20s quite the same way. Like most of us, our views change as our experiences do.
Now, when I rock on my porch and look at Mrs. Beem’s Pond, I like to reflect on Thoreau’s most famous quote and how it relates to my current priorities and the simple joys of living in such a beautiful, small town with so many interesting and caring neighbors surrounding us.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” - Henry David Thoreau, “Walden”
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