A HAMILTONIAN ON WALDEN POND
Thoreau’s iconic New England pond is still an inspiration for visitors in Concord
It’s arguably one of the most famous ponds in the world.
Almost 65 acres wide and 103 feet deep, Walden Pond was immortalized by the writer and philosopher Henry David Thoreau who regularly boated and bathed here, walking its 1.7-mile perimeter while playing a wooden flute and paying close attention to nature.
Trouble is, my husband, Spec columnist Jeff Mahoney, doesn’t want to go for a swim.
I tell him it doesn’t seem right if we don’t take a quick dip. It’s an eighthour pilgrimage to drive to this iconic site in conservation history, a celebrated place of literary inspiration that’s been known to “reduce English majors to quivering hyperventilating groupies,” as one writer put it.
This is where Thoreau, a pencil maker and surveyor by trade, built a 10-by-15-foot cabin where he lived alone for two years. He recorded his experiences in “Walden,” a reflection on simple living, self sufficiency and the benefits of taking in “the tonic of the wilderness,” that’s still considered a masterpiece of American non-fiction more than 160 years after its publication. It features famous pronouncements such as “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation” and “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”
I can’t blame Jeff for being reluctant to wade in. It’s early fall and the water is cold. I take the lead and slide into the silky water, its surface mirroring the grand pines that reach to the sky above and its depths as clean and clear as a quarry swimming hole. It feels like a baptism of sorts, an immersion in a secular Jordan.
“It’s one for the bucket list!” I call out to Jeff, who’s still standing on the shore.
And, good sport that he is, he dives right in.
Located in a 300-acre state park, Walden Pond is a spiritual sojourn for more than half a million annual visitors who flock to the shimmering shores of this magical and yet very ordinary pond in the quintessential New England hamlet of Concord, 25 kilometres west of Boston. They trek the shaded footpath that encircles the pond, stop to pay homage at the original site of Thoreau’s one-room cabin and lay a stone on a memorial cairn where a large wooden sign displays his quote about his sojourn here: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
The pond is a point of pride in this town, which is famous for two revolutions.
Concord is the site of the first battle of the American Revolution — the notorious “shot heard ‘round the world.” Busloads of military buffs disembark at the Minute Man National Historic Park, which commemorates the April 19, 1775, battle of that seven-year war.
And it’s also the birthplace of the 19th century philosophical, spiritual and literary revolution known as transcendentalism, a movement centred on a tightly knit group of writers and intellectuals headed by the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson that included Thoreau, as well as the novelists Nathaniel Hawthorne (“The Scarlet Letter”) and Louisa May Alcott (“Little Women”). For 20 years they lived within just a few miles of each other, a “genius cluster” that shared their writing and spiritual and political views (they believed God was more likely to be found in nature than in a church). With such a powerful circle of brainpower it’s no wonder the writer Henry James dubbed Concord “the biggest little place in America.”
This year marks the bicentennial of Thoreau’s birth and in the spirit of honouring him we stay at the historic Concord Inn, once owned by members of Thoreau’s family (it also served as both hospital and morgue during the American Revolution.) We also dine at the elegant 80 Thoreau restaurant, musing that its namesake would likely disapprove of the fact that we spend more on the bottle of wine we order at dinner than the $28 it cost for him to construct his house.
With its rich past, Concord is home to more than two dozen historical attractions. Here are five you don’t want to miss:
1. Walden Pond State Reservation features a new, multimilliondollar visitor centre that’s a model of green technology with locally sourced wood, vehicle charging stations and solar-powered parking pass machines. The park has a replica of Thoreau’s cabin, furnished with a bed, desk and three chairs — “one for solitude, two for friendship and three for society.” A “Where’s Your Walden?” interactive display invites visitors to identify their own special places on a digitized world map.
2. The Concord Museum has the world’s largest collection of Thoreau artifacts, including the simple green desk on which he wrote his most famous works. The Ever New Self: Thoreau and His Journal, on display until January, brings together 100 items from the world’s most significant Thoreau collections, including 20 of his journals.
3. Louisa May Alcott lived at Orchard House, a home immortalized in “Little Women,” which she wrote over a period of 10 weeks, basing the characters of Meg, Beth and Amy on her real-life sisters and Jo on herself. Take a guided tour and see the desk where she wrote her famous novel and stroll through the living room where the sisters staged their whimsical plays.
4. Just up the street is the Emerson House, where the famous philosopher lived for 50 years, and which served as a meeting place of the Concord transcendentalists. The museum, still owned by the Emerson family, features original furnishings and memorabilia and knowledgeable guides vividly describe his personal and professional life.
5. Author’s Ridge at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, a lushly treed 120-acre graveyard, is the final resting place of the transcendentalists, whose legendary movement died with them. As in life, they remained close in death, their tombstones separated by mere yards. Thoreau’s is the most unassuming, a tiny tombstone modestly marked, “Henry.” Even in death he stayed true to his maxim to “simplify, simplify, simplify.” Endearingly, several pencils are stabbed into the earth around his headstone, proving his devoted pilgrims have followed right him right to his grave.