After putting the grandchildren to bed, there is nothing I like better than sitting on my wraparound porch in the gathering dusk, gently tapping my old meerschaum against the arm of my favorite rocking chair to dislodge the cold ash embedded within.

Oft times I will spy a young deer at the edge of my property, bending to graze upon a tender huckleberry shrub. On evenings such as these, as I rest and contemplate, my thoughts invariably drift to Henry David Thoreau, and what a weirdo he was.

One night, in fact, I may have had too many heavy sweets with my dinner, or perhaps it was the Welsh rarebit, or the jeroboam of champagne I consumed, but I swore as I began to doze that a hazy figure walked toward me across the lawn, coming from the direction of my ancestral woods, and as this figure neared, I saw that it was none other than Henry David Thoreau himself.

Keats tells us that “things semi-real” require “a greeting of the spirit to make them wholly exist.” It was with this in mind that I shouted a friendly “hallo” to my spectral visitor and bade him enjoy a respite in the rocking chair next to mine.

“Don’t mind if I do,” he said. Hearing his crisp New England intonation, I no longer harbored any doubt that this was the very man.

“Say,” he said, before settling in, “it’s awful hot weather.”

“That it is,” I agreed. “Do you mind if I take my shirt off?” he inquired.

“I would be insulted if you didn’t,” I entreated.

Henry David Thoreau removed his shirt, revealing a lithe torso. He left on his old-fashioned suspenders, or “braces,” to surprisingly sexy effect.

“There, that’s better,” he said. “I used to be on the swim team, but I have really let myself go.” “Are you kidding me?” I cried. “You have a fantastic body. I don’t know why, but I thought you’d be hairier.”

“In my day, it was perfectly natural for respectable gentlemen to speak to one another in such a fashion, and nothing was thought of it,” he informed me.

We sat awhile in companionable silence, listening to the crickets make their merry song and observing the twinkling of the stars.

“Nature sure is great,” I said.

I thought I heard him sigh. I interpreted his thoughts as, I have nothing on this guy!

He’s good.

“Nature is different in Heaven,” he said after some long moments of contemplation. “For example, you can eat anything. You could eat a handful of sand if you wanted to, and delicious it would be. Everything is a different color than it is here. Water is orange...