It happens almost the same time every year in spite of what the weather has wrought – warmer than usual temperatures or frigid cold – in the preceding months. This year was no different.

And so I jumped into Walden Pond this week for my first swim of the season. I carry in my car a thermometer, which I use to check the water of Walden or, on occasion, a trout stream that I’m contemplating. When I dipped it into the pond it read in the mid-60s, and though not entirely reliable, I deemed...

The common refrain these days is the water’s beautiful, but it is a bit chilly when you get out.  Then someone laughs and says well, you just need to stay in the water longer. And someone else adds, yes, that’ll work until around November.

The water we’re all talking about is the water at Walden Pond. On a mid-summer’s day, when the air temperature ranges into the 80s and the water temperature approaches that, it’s home to hundreds, families and singles, young and old, loungers and...

The season may be coming to an end, but it has been a wondrous season and I have no complaints.

The season I’m referring to is the season of Walden Pond. It began for me a little later than I would have liked, just past mid-May, but I have missed few days since and have enjoyed virtually every second of every minute that I have been in the water. Even today, with the temperature approaching the mid-50s.

To swim as many days as I have at the pond – close to 150 – a number of factors...

In the final analysis, it really is all about chance decisions and the encounters that occur because of them, is it not?

The decision to stay in bed for a little longer on a certain day and then narrowly avoiding – or causing – an accident on the highway because you’re trying to make up time. Or convincing yourself to go to the gym when you’re just a little too tired, but know that you really should. Or just saying yes, when you know that no is the right answer.

I know I need to...

I had contemplated a Walden Pond swim today. After all, it was a beautiful, cloudless day, virtually windless with the air temperature in the mid-50s. Almost ideal on my list for what makes it a good November-December day for a swim. Almost. But tomorrow, December 6, was forecast to be even better with temperatures in the low 60s, so I decided to hold off for a day and do something I hadn’t done since early spring – take a walk around the pond.

There were a number of people fishing, one...