It was a cool, crisp autumn afternoon when I arrived back at the Lake. It was a short drive from Concord, and as I drove down Walden St. it began to dawn on me how much things had changed since I’d been here last, some odd twenty-five years ago. The shore was littered with rubbish then, there was no dock from which to jump into the beautiful, bluish pond, and there were no monuments to the long-dead writer who made this place famous. And while pleasure and historical interest was not my intention this time, I still could not help but reflect on the acts of civil disobedience that occurred here and how much I had changed and what I had become since them.

  As I traversed a few hundred yards into the woods and walked along the Black Gum Trail I stopped to look back at the glistening pond, and I mused at the line uttered by some actor or playwright: “who knows what darkness lies beneath...” Yes, what had I become...? Had I taken the time I might have planted the seed in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery next to its most famous occupant, but in my haste I besmirched the golden pond, and now as I walked along the trail, the beautiful pines rustling in the wind, I began to take it all in.

  A “Kettle Hole” the experts called it; glaciers which retreated some 10,000 years ago. And here I was, my second trip to this sacred site from which a lonely man carried his act of contrivance a century or two ago, and indeed this time there was no pleasure in my soul. Perhaps the darkness and depth of the pond reflected the depravity of my imagination, and as I sat on the sandy shore a few hours staring into the beautiful, blue water, a nervous tremor began to shiver my spine

   I looked around suspiciously but thankfully it was a chilly fall day and few people had ventured out... Normally there would be tourists sitting on the sandy shore staring at the beautiful pines and the glistening pond, or a few disillusioned hippies on a pilgrimage in honor of the father of civil disobedience Henry David Thoreau. In my travels I had often been  startled when encountering these burned out revolutionaries who were now fifty or sixty years old and still dropping acid and smoking weed wishing it were nineteen sixty-eight. It was light going through a time warp, but that’s another story.  

   As I came back to my senses a ripple of water suddenly disturbed the calm surface, and thankfully I was quick to notice the bobbing head of a Bluegill, a Brown Bullhead, or what I though was Chain Pickerel. As I wiped the sweat from my brow I wondered what the depth of this marvelous lake was and how far down...what I mean to say is that I knew the width to be 2.7 kilometers, but I had not come across the depth or imagined what prehistoric crevices lay at the bottom concealing the bones of the fish and fowl which had succumbed to the inevitable sting of death.  Darkness began to consume me and as I stared into the rippling water the beautiful shade of blue turned suddenly black and suddenly a face appeared in the water and glared at me with an evil smirk. Then with a sudden start I realized that I had drifted off to sleep and began to slump over, catching myself at the moment my head was about to be dashed against a jagged rock.

  That would have been ironic, that is if the reader of this missive was prescient, but as far as I was concerned I “was only doing what I had been ordered to do, and if I had not done it, well you know the story, “Mercedes Crashes into Tree, Mysterious Fire Envelopes the Vehicle.” So be it then, you might say that I was on a working vacation, and as the Sparrows swooped about my head and the sweet smell of pine stimulated my senses, I again pondered the age-old question of what was the meaning of life, and what did it matter to the universal spectrum if one person disintegrated into dust, and whether or not the person who dispatched him into the unknown would be held to account in the nether world.

   Always this damn philosophy, and as old, George used to say, Too much philosophy, my friend, don't think so much. Yeah, don't think, that's easy for you to say. But then again it's not a question of guilt. What the hell does guilt have to do with it? I mean guilt is only an ontological phenomenon, right? Are you sure? He always asked. What the hell do you mean am I sure, I haven't been sure of anything since nineteen seventy-two.  Always these goddam reflections weighing on my mind: if only I could erase all memories of the past, all the drugs, all the alcohol, all the loose women that meant not a damn thing to me, all the vile rock music that damaged my hearing, and every other senseless act that annihilates any understanding of existence.

   And as evening dawned on me and I drove back toward Concord, a song emanated in my head; “And here I stand with valor untold, exceptionally brave, amazingly bold, to serve at the Table Round.” That's it, I'm a Knight who justifies his actions by the simple words, “nothing personal, it's only business.