We returned a few Sundays ago from our long-awaited American Transcendentalist practicum in Concord, MA. Monday morning the smell of hing and methi still lingered in the car, and visions of America’s most influential thinkers and writers still danced in our heads.
It all began on Christmas Day 2011, when I unwrapped a box containing a bright green 3-ring binder and what felt like thirty or forty pounds of scholarly tomes. Inside the binder, the syllabus and attendant resource materials for a graduate-level course created by Matea: ENGL 446: American Transcendentalism and the Prominence of Place. The self-directed course, which we were to work through together, would become a passage back to the nascent pulses of the Unitarian Universalist traditions we have adopted in Vermont, and the stream of progressive, idealistic New England virtues which we heartily imbibe.
In early January we commenced our course with the introductions of Meyerson’s Transcendentalism: A Reader and Finch and Elder’s Norton Book of Nature Writing. For the subsequent four months we devoted ourselves to the major works of Emerson, Thoreau, Bronson and Louisa May Alcott, and others active in the 19th century transcendentalist movement, making our way through the better part of the Meyerson anthology. The assignment of Little Women in late March was a welcome reprieve from the difficult line-by-line explications of “Nature,” “Orphic Sayings,” and “Self-Reliance.” To synthesize our readings and bring a finer focus on the difficult-to-pinpoint transcendentalist concepts, we finished the course with Schreiner’s The Concord Quartet: Alcott, Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau and the Friendship that Freed the American Mind.
On April 25, we embarked on the experiential learning component of the course with a trip to the North Bridge Inn in Concord. The excursion was meant to eliminate degrees of spiritual and geographic separation from our transcendentalist cousins (I was not allowed to call them “trannies” for short) and elucidate some of the more inscrutable passages, most attributed to Mr. Emerson, which we were still mulling over in our heads. As the day approached, we found ourselves “too excited to sleep,” so we decided to append a night’s stay to our trip and overnight Wednesday in Tewksbury, MA. There we treated ourselves to a delicious Greek dinner at a local dive and enjoyed a scrumptious diner breakfast the following morning; Guy Fieri did not make an appearance.
On the official first full day of the trip, it truly appeared that nature was in a wonderful mood to be…communed with…and it was our expressed intent to do so. All week the forecast had promised an abysmal Thursday of rain and gloom, but Thursday morning we awoke to fair temperatures and sunny blue skies that would follow us for the remainder of the trip. On the road to Concord we passed stunning colonial houses whose yards were a profusion of pinks and purples, the hues of early spring and the ubiquitous dogwoods, lilacs, and azaleas in full bloom. As we approached the town center, a proud she-turkey strutted across the road in front of us as if to say, be sure to slow down and take it all in.
First stop was the small but well-executed Concord Museum, which provided a great context for the town’s dual claims to fame: as the birthplace of the American transcendentalist movement and the home of the “shot heard round the world” that unexpectedly initiated the American War of Independence. A favorite among the museum’s exhibits was the exact replica of Emerson’s study, complete with nearly all the original furnishings and Emerson’s own collection of books, which were saved from his home across the street when it burned in 1872 and moved permanently to the museum in 1930. My personal favorite was the large horsehair sofa upon which the likes of Thoreau, Alcott, Hawthorne, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Margaret Fuller, abolitionist insurrection leader John Brown, and Senator Daniel Webster sat a while to visit the “sage of Concord,” and upon whose bulky, protruding feet many of them inelegantly tripped on their way out. Above the couch hung a replica painting of asters and goldenrod given as a Christmas gift to Emerson by Louisa May Alcott’s artist sister May.
In the adjoining room was housed some personal effects of Thoreau, including the chair and rope bed frame from his studio efficiency on Walden Pond and the desk on which he composed
Walden and “Civil Disobedience.”
Aside from the literary collections, we also enjoyed the 1775 Revere lantern that alerted militiamen to the British advance on Concord, the special Colonial Treasures exhibition containing letters of John and Abigail Adams, and the permanent exhibit upstairs presenting rooms decorated according to the fashion through different periods in history. We had nearly decided to leave the museum off our self-guided tour of the city, but we both agreed afterwards that it was a must-see for those making a pilgrimage to transcendentalist New England.
Next we headed to the final meeting place of the Transcendentalist Club. Sleepy Hollow Cemetery (not to be confused with that of Washington Irving fame) is a short walk or drive northeast of town center and plays gracious host to most of the major transcendentalist figures, as well as famed Concord sculptor Daniel Chester French (The Minute Man statue and the Lincoln Memorial), inventor of the Concord Grape Ephraim Wales Bull, and education reformer Elizabeth Peabody.
We drove through the stone pillars of the Prichard Gate and followed the meandering paved path around a curving slope lined with a low stone wall and flowering dogwoods, to reach the small parking area of Author’s Ridge. Excepting some noise from the road, the grounds seem as they were 150 years ago, stone markers dotting the hillsides and intermingling with towering pines, woodbine, and azalea bushes.
A dense moss covers the ground on the steep hill leading to Author’s Ridge. Resting in close proximity, in a perpetual pleasing shade, the Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Alcott family plots were the first we spotted. Thoreau’s unassuming headstone, reading simply “Henry,” resides next to that of his sister Sophia among a tangle of exposed tree roots. Visitors who had come earlier in the morning had left tokens at the site: a plastic battery-operated votive candle, a collection of smooth pebbles, and a fresh white chrysanthemum.
We added our own pebbles to the left downward slope of the headstone after contemplating for a moment that the moss under our feet carried forth at least an atomic manifestation of the man himself, as would have pleased him verily. We stopped for a short time at the Hawthorne family plot, where Hawthorne, his beloved wife Sophia, and their daughter Una are interred. Though the Hawthornes were an exceedingly devoted and “cute” couple who found love later in life, the paterfamilias was admittedly not our favorite among his contemporaries. Other fans, however, had left tokens to honor the man who penned
The Scarlet Letter,
The House of the Seven Gables, and other notable stories. The Alcott family burial site was located just across from the Hawthornes’ and is identified by the intricately-carved monolith standing in the center of the square plot. The family foot stones are marked merely with each individual’s initials and birth and death dates. Placed next to the flat stone bearing Louisa’s full name was the U.S. Veteran medallion marking her service as a nurse during the Civil War.
The medication administered to treat the typhoid fever and pneumonia she contracted during this brief post would, ironically, lead to life-long ill health and her slow death due to mercury poisoning. The rest of the Little Women—her sisters Anna, Elizabeth, and May, who were featured semi-biographically in Alcott’s most famous book—have markers nearby (May is actually interred in France), as well as her beloved mother Abba and her transcendentalist father Bronson, who inspired important reforms in the education system during his lifetime. Further on, at the peak of the hill and looking down upon the greater part of Sleepy Hollow, is the imposing slab of pink granite (which manages to be both the most grandiose and the most unassuming markers upon Author’s Ridge) marking the burial site of the Transcendentalist Club’s most venerable member, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Many members of the Emerson family are buried here, and Waldo is flanked by his dear wife Lidian and their daughter Ellen. Here, as we had with Thoreau and Alcott, we placed a small stone atop the granite. Emerson himself, certainly not in doubt that it would one day become his own final resting place, gave the cemetery’s dedication speech in late September 1855. On that day, he would accurately portend that, “When these acorns, that are falling at our feet, are oaks overshadowing our children in a remote century, this mute green bank will be full of history: the good, the wise, and the great will have left their names and virtues on the trees…will have made the air tuneable and articulate.” Matea and I, children of this remote century looking out over the sparkling marsh abutting Author’s Ridge, made sure to breathe deeply as we lingered.
The morning had mildly slipped away as we descended the footpath back to the parking area. With the windows down and our fingers strumming at the light breeze, we headed to the picturesque downtown area to make a quick stop at the Concord Cheese Shop, where we procured some delightful picnic provisions before continuing down Route 126 to Walden Pond. A gorgeous pink dogwood greeted us at the gate to the State Reservation area.
On this unexpectedly perfect day in late April, we were a bit surprised to find the parking lots largely vacant. We parked next to the replica cabin the park has built to look exactly like the one in which Thoreau lived for two years while conducting his famed social experiment.
The cottage, in its entirety, was smaller than a modern-day master bedroom (10’ x 15’) and was modestly but suitably appointed with a table on which to eat, a bed in which to sleep, and a desk on which to write.
After arm-wrestling with the bronze statue of Thoreau outside the replica cabin, we gathered our picnic accoutrements and headed to the original site of his temporary domicile. Walden Pond sits across the two-lane highway from the parking area, and the site is a pleasant half-mile hike along the water’s edge. Along the way we snapped pictures of the 64-acre kettle hole pond and observed the budding foliage that Thoreau so carefully catalogued over 150 years ago.
The swarming summer throngs had not yet arrived—Walden Pond is an extremely popular tourist destination and swimming hole in the summer months—and we found the journey both serene and surreal. We approached the small cove Thoreau chose as the location of his dwelling and crossed a small foot bridge to reach the site of the foundation. We were surprised to find that the cabin had not been built directly on the water but was located on a small rise about 100 feet into the woods. As we approached the site on the worn footpath, the famous “I came to the woods” sign came into view, and next to it was the cairn of which Bronson Alcott laid the first stone in 1872.
Thousands of medium-sized rocks comprise the stony heap today, and Matea and I added two of our own to the pile, just as Walt Whitman also did in reverence to Thoreau in 1881. The original foundation of Thoreau’s cabin is marked with nine stone pillars about two feet in height.
Inside the rectangle of pillars lays a flat stone marking the cabin’s chimney foundation, and here we laid out our picnic. With the pond still in view and no other visitors to intrude upon our repast, we endeavored to “simplify, simplify” with a ploughman’s lunch of homemade cheese straws, a seeded demi-baguette, creamy and piquant Roquefort cheese, a wedge of English-made Red Dragon, a plug of “fig bread,” and a few crisp cornichons.
It was a wholly satisfying experience, making a quiet visit to Thoreau in his spot in the woods a century and a half later, taking in the natural scenery, and feasting on delectable imported cheeses.
We took a different trail through the woods back to the parking area and, beginning to feel the myriad activities of the day, drove into town to check in to the Emerson Suite of the North Bridge Inn (another detail Matea had seen to as part of my Christmas present). After a brief rest, and for a rather incongruous finish to the day, we ventured over to Lexington to have dinner at a Mexican restaurant located in a strip mall. The day had been all kinds of wonderful. As the sun set and a tease of rain finally began to fall, we sucked the vegetarian-bean-chimichanga marrow out of life to the serenade of a live mariachi band.
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