A pilgrimmage to Walden Pond

Monday, September 30th.

We spent most of yesterday, Sunday, taking all our stuff out of the van and trying to reorganize it to make better use of the space in the van -- which seems to grow smaller every day! We'd gotten into the habit of bringing stuff home and just chucking the bags into a pile with all our other stuff. Which meant that we didn't really know where anything was, nor did we actually know exactly what we had. So we sort of took inventory while we had everything out yesterday. We gave up trying to take count of all the clothing we've bought, but on the musical side of things we counted just short of 60 cd's between the two of us, the majority of which have been bought within the last few days... :)

Our original plan was to make today, Monday, our last day in the Boston area. A major point of interest left on Dan's wishlist was Concord and Walden Pond, so we headed in that direction as soon as we got up and going this morning. Ever since he read the first chapters of "Walden" five years ago and later re-read it and made the book the subject of a major theme paper for school, Dan has been fascinated with Henry David Thoreau and all his thoughts and writings. Walden Pond is something of a shrine to all Thoreauvians, and he had long dreamt of making a pilgrimmage there to see it. And thus our plan for today was conceived.

Arriving in Concord we found a very nice lady at the Visitor's Center who helped us get oriented in the area. Before we started the tour of the area, though, there was something else that we needed to get done. The van had been acting up again and we knew that it needed an oil change so we thought we'd finally get that done. It had also had trouble starting the past few days so we figured that it was about time to put some anti-freeze in the cooling system. The lady at the tourist information office gave us directions to a Jiffy Lube in a nearby town so we headed there right away to get all of that taken care of.

After giving the van that much-needed fix-up and getting some lunch for ourselves we headed back to Concord. The first stop on the way was the Concord Museum. The exhibits it housed on the different time periods of Concord and its significance in the Revolutionary War were interesting in their own right, but were nothing compared to the experience of seeing the actual desk, chair and bed that Thoreau had furnished his cabin at Walden Pond with some 160 years ago. An equally profound experience was seeing the Thoreau family gravesite in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. The cemetery itself was interesting; it was as much a public park as it was a cemetery. On the paths between the beautiful old gravestones were joggers taking an afternoon run as well as people walking through the cemetery as if taking a stroll in the park. Although it seemed odd compared to what we are used to we actually liked it. It made the cemetery seem less somber. And we agreed that if we were buried there we would rather have people come to the cemetery to enjoy themselves rather than only to grieve or even out of simple obligation.

The Thoreau family grave was located on Author's Ridge next to the gravesites of the equally famous Alcott's, Emerson's and Hawthorne's and only a small distance from William Ellery Channing and other notable Concord citizens. The center stone in the Thoreau gravesite bore all the names and dates of the family members. But surrounding it were small, simple stones engraved simply "Mother", "Father", "Sophia", "Henry" etc. Thoreau was never a man of great wordly possesions and it seemed right that his grave should be marked by such a simple yet noble stone.

After visiting the cemetery we drove out to Walden Pond, just a few miles outside of the city. Jens, who has never had the chance to read a word of Thoreau's writings, didn't have any personal interest in the Pond and instead set out on his own expedition into the surrounding area. Dan, on the other hand, set out to complete his pilgrimmage and pay homage to that great spirit that was Henry Thoreau at the site most fit to do so. After visiting the Thoreau Society's bookstore as the last customer of the day he explored the replica of Thoreau's cabin conveniently located next to the parking lot and then crossed the highway and started his walk around the Pond. The wildlife seemed as teeming as it had been in Thoreau's time. The birds competed with the crickets in a friendly contest of gay chirping while the chipmunks scampered here and there across the trail and the squirrels kept busy stripping the trees of the last acorns left. The Pond was beautiful in its quiet majesty as the sun set over the still water. There were still a few swimmers left on the sandy shores of the Pond and a few other hikers making their way around its circumference. But the trails through the woods were void of other people and it was hard to imagine that over half a million people visit the Pond each year. Thoreau's cabin was sold and taken down soon after he left the Pond in 1847 after his two year refuge there. All that marks the site now is a large engraved rock marking the foundation of the chimney on his cabin and 6 granite stones that mark the outline of the small one room cabin. Nearby is a wood sign bearing Thoreau's famous statement of purpose from "Walden":

"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."

Next to the sign was a huge pile of stones, each one placed there by a Thoreauvian pilgrim visiting the site. From his cabin Thoreau only had to walk a few hundred feet to get to the shore of Walden Pond. The Pond is beautiful even considered simply as a body of water surrounded by forest. But the presence of Thoreau's cabin, or the remains of it at least, adds a level of spirituality to the place that makes it understandable that the Transcendentalists sought and found religious experiences in Nature.

Enlightened by the experience at the Pond we decided to extend our stay in the area another day so that we could return to the Pond for a swim in the morning. So instead of heading off towards upstate New York we simply drove down the road until we found a great pizza place where we had dinner and then found a nice looking parking lot where we could spend the night.