The Hidden Story

We go dry when disconnected from our true nature.

I’m driving to work the other morning with the radio on, and hear Molly Tuttle 

singing a song called “Walden.” I immediately know the words must be coming from

Henry David Thoreau’s famous work, as I listen and pick up some of the lines: The 

land where we dwell will not always be dry and Long after we’re gone, still the earth

will turn round and round and The life in us is like water in a river. And even though I 

don’t know exactly where she found these words in Walden, I think back to what I

know about the text, teaching the Transcendentalists to juniors in high school.  Yes, 

we read about the different drummer, but what stood out to me was Thoreau’s

singular experience in the bean fields, how he would spend his mornings hacking 

away at weeds that were relentless, how determined he was to know the beans,

even as he rarely ate them. Since I somehow do not own a copy of Walden, I found 

the bean fields paragraph online, and that is when I realized that our nonviolent

Henry David was speaking of being at war with the pigweed and piper-grass and 

Roman wormwood. This was his Trojan War, one relentless fibrous and strong weed

being compared to Hector, that towered a whole foot above his crowding comrades, 

fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust. These were the killing fields! I was

puzzled at first about this war talk, but then I realized the truth – Thoreau was in 

touch with his own spirit and soul. Working the bean fields was a practice,

and part of the mythology of our world is about conflicting forces. It was natural for 

him to tap into that myth, that hidden story, to make his experience full. This is the

reason we must have practices. He was simply being a full participant in life, and his 

personification of the weeds brings this into full relief and is another reminder that

our every day activities have consequence for us, bring us closer or farther away 

from ourselves.

Which brings us back to Molly’s song. When the desert is growing around us, when 

we feel the world we know is coming or has come to an end, our job is to reach

inside of ourselves and find that hidden story, that water of life, the one that will 

help us rise again, and create the new world meant to be born in our time, with our

help, with our dedication and strength and unique gifts. May we rise this year, may 

rise higher than man has ever known. May our singular mythic nature make everything

unnecessary disappear.

(Some ideas for this poem also came from Michael Meade's podcast "Mythic by Nature.")