Welcome
This blog is a chronicle of life and the seasons at the New Concord Reservoir. The manmade reservoir lies about a mile and a half outside the village of New Concord toward the end of a country road lined with small farms and homes. A half mile long and about 150 yards wide at its widest point, it is bordered by forests on its eastern, western and northern shores.
New Concord is a village in Southeastern Ohio, which, like its New England namesake, originally served a hinterland of small farms. Today, life in the village is shaped primarily by the presence of Muskingum College, a private, residential liberal arts college founded by Scots-Irish Presbyterians in 1837.
The New Concord reservoir lies about the same distance from the village of New Concord as Walden pond lies from the village of Concord, Massachusetts. It is only about one quarter of the size of Walden, and no great works have celebrated it. While Walden is a natural pond, carved by receding glacial moraines, the New Concord reservoir required human intervention to emerge. It only came into existence a few decades ago, when the village created an earthen dam near the headwaters of Fox Creek, and its first function was to ensure a dependable source of water for the village.
Neither Walden, nor our reservoir are notable for their extraordinary majesty or wildness; both exist in the midst of civilization rather than remote from it. In chronicling the days of Walden Pond, Thoreau sought to encourage us all to appreciate the ordinary natural world we live in rather than only valuing that which is remote and seemingly untouched by human hands.
This blog is intended to encourage you to find your own Walden in your own neighborhood. Visit it frequently, learn from it, find peace and inspiration there, share it, cherish it, and protect it.
A Line From Emerson
"How does nature deify us with a few and cheap elements! Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous." From
Nature (1836).
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