When I was in fourth grade, a big thing happened to me: I was given sole responsibility of the family paper route. The paper route had been in our family since my sister (who is ten years older than me) was young, then my brothers took over until it was finally my turn. The purpose of delivering newspapers around the neighborhood was to teach me responsibility and also to give me a small source of my own income. What I actually got out if it couldn’t have been foreseen.

Everyday for five years I would come home from school, change and get all the papers ready. Then, I would begin walking the hilly and winding path to deliver the daily newspaper to all the faithful readers. This was at a time before cell phones, MP3 players and other forms of portable electronics, so I was my only entertainment during the 30-60 minute route. At first, I would think about things like school, homework, sports, television and other things. However, as I did this day in and day out, these things got old.

Soon enough my mind began to wander to the nature I would see around me and I’d think about how amazing it is that things were able to grow so tall without any human intervention (trees in the woods behind my house). I would contemplate so many different things about nature and how it was physically possible, which eventually led me to think about life in general.

My thoughts about life started out simple: what am I going to do with mine? What actions of mine would be most beneficial for future generations? At some point over the years it turned from wondering about my life to wondering about life in general. What does it mean? Why were we given this opportunity? Is it really about making the world better or is it just a test given by somebody above? What happens after our life is over?

Sometimes my thoughts turned a bit morbid and made me think things like, if life is just going to end someday, why waste time building relationships and doing the “right” way? But eventually my thoughts brightened up, ironically enough I can remember it was during spring. This is why personally Thoreau’s chapter on Spring really struck me. The imagery used made me go back to the times when I would be walking around my neighborhood, though not quite the landscape of Walden Pond, but how the nature around me made me question deeper personal things.

As I mentioned earlier, I would think about the intricacies of nature. One passage in Spring that really captures one of my exact thoughts is from page 207 when he says “The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, (…) but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit.” I just really love this because I would always think about how a tree seems to be an inanimate object until one day I would walk past and see beautiful flowers or apples growing. The fact that this can happen astounded me and still does even today.

Also I found an interesting article that reminded me of our class discussion about work and stress: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/education/27colleges.html?_r=1&hp