“The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure.”Trees at Dusk near Walden...

American author, essayist, poet, naturalist, transcendentalist, civil anarchist, abolitionist and philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote this sentence in the mid 1800s, from a place not far from where I’m writing these words today. I’m in Littleton, Massachusetts, less than 10 miles from Walden Pond.

I’ve long read and followed Mr. Thoreau’s work. That passage hangs on my wall and is a central piece of my work-at-home philosophy — and that I espouse when speaking to fellow entrepreneurs. In modern speak, it’s akin to, “Work smart, not hard.”

Yet I’ll admit: I had no idea how close we’d come to the place where he lived, worked and died, from 1817 to 1862. We’re less than five miles from Concord, his home — that is, when he wasn’t in the vast woods nearby.

Seeing the sign for Walden Pond State Recreation Area yesterday, I nearly had to pull over and explore. Yet the hour was late, and we needed to pitch camp (OK, so we’re in a camper – “pitching” camp means plugging in the power, water and cable)…

But I explored a bit, nonetheless. The Zbars are that way. My father explored the nation’s parks and slept in a tent, and he Scuba dived the world’s seas. He imbued his children with a similar spirit of adventure, a thirst for knowledge, and a desire to be among all things natural. While I’m in the woods outside Concord, my brother is spending yet another summer exploring the outback of Sweden, camping at night and picking wild strawberries during the day. While highways get you places quickly, it’s the side roads that bring meaning to your adventures.

Beside the Boston Minuteman Campground where we’re staying is a vast stretch of woods. I doubt Mr. Thoreau ever explored this place, but Native Americans and pioneer settlers did. I’m sure Minutemen and Redcoats alike trod these grounds. As I sit at my campsite, listening to the birds and imagining the history, my mind wanders far and wide. I’m in a great place, the birthplace of our United States of America, a place full of folklore and steeped in relevance as we head into times unknown and I sit at my PC. Like 232 years ago, our country is at a crossroads — socially, morally, politically. We live in times of tumult and uncertainty, wondering which path we’ll choose in four months’ time.

As I write this, I cannot help but feel the writer in me is channeling a writer from 150 years ago. His book, Walden, or Life in the Woods, captured the essence of “simple living.” People strive for it today. They buy magazines and books, attend pricey lectures that Mr. Thorough undoubtedly would have provided for free to any comer during his day. In Wikipedia it is said of Walden, “Part memoir and part spiritual quest, Walden at first won few admirers, but today critics regard it as a classic American book that explores natural simplicity, harmony, and beauty as models for just social and cultural conditions.”

Simplicity? Not in 2008. A funny thing happened in the woods yesterday. The hour was late. Night was falling. Robbie and Nicole were not so moved as I to hike the unmarked trails. So they decided to head back. I found a long, somewhat curved branch, broke it to five feet to fashion a walking stick, and continued on. The mood was rich with an aura of specialness. I could feel history around me. The deeper I traipsed into the woods, the sound of cars fell off, so that all I could hear were birds and the crackle of my feet on dried, fallen leaves. The spirit was strong and deep.

Then my cell phone rang. It was Nicole, just making sure they could reach me. “Do you think Henry David Thoreau was ever interrupted from his meditations by his family calling just to see if he had cells?!” I asked, tongue firmly implanted in cheek.

As I continued on, I paused to take in the moment. This was history. As an American, I was in the bosom of our birth, as a writer, I was in the nature that inspired one of our greatest. As a person, I was at one with my surroundings. It was a wonderful moment, and I was inspired to write — and write long. Yet after an hour’s hike through the woods, I returned to the vehicle, duly inspired but exceedingly tired from an already 14-hour day. It was time for slumber.

Besides, my best writing comes now, at dawn, when the mind is alert, the thoughts are flowing, and visions of a fellow writer 146 years gone — an ardent abolitionist who died before seeing an end to the Civil War — channel through my mind. I wrote weeks before this journey that I hoped to work and write from the woods, albeit on a laptop and not a journal, but write just the same about my thoughts and this adventure we were to take.

Weeks later, irony or coincidence — I’m not sure which — find me a day’s hike from Walden, and even closer to Concord, a spot on a map that until yesterday I didn’t even know was the birthplace of a writer I’ve long admired and read. Henry David Thoreau inspires me to this day, to write, to think, to bow to the nature of the way things are, and feel honored and humbled to be in their — his — presence.