Articles Tagged with ''henry david thoreau''

In the summer of 1842, Concord was like any other New England town. Sitting 18 miles west of Boston, the town of 2,000 souls was still very rural. The railroad wouldn’t come through for another two years, and there was no telegraph yet; only the daily stagecoach and the post office connected Concord to the rest of the world.  

In the wild places of Concord linger old Puritan superstitions and Transcendental possibilities. We begin in the year 1620 when, bearing sea-weary Puritan separatists, the Mayflower arrived off Cape Cod’s coast revealing what Pilgrim leader William Bradford noted as “a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wild beasts.”

To the Puritans, the Wilderness was the devil’s territory. Satan would not linger in the exposed coastal regions where the Puritans first settled and kept him at bay with devout prayer, but he was always there, in the wild forests, the swamps, the unexplored places, tempting them to leave the seaside settlements of early Massachusetts and stray from righteousness.

Discover which of the historical tales you've heard for years aren't true at all.

Winters in New England can be harsh and unforgiving with days, or even weeks, of below-freezing temperatures and with snowfalls that are often measured in feet. It’s a season when all but the heartiest of New Englanders hunker down, put on a few extra layers of flannel, crank the thermostat, and stay cozy and warm at home. 

One Concordian who enjoyed the winter, though, was Henry David Thoreau. He would happily go on his daily walk “in all seasons” and a wintery landscape held just as much promise for an exciting excursion as did the fields and forests in July. 

In October 2019, I designed a literary pilgrimage that would take me to the Thoreau Farm in Concord, Massachusetts. I would be a writer in retreat in the second-story bedroom where Thoreau was born, and a few days later I would be a student participating in a writing workshop held by The Write Connection and taught by Heidi Jon Schmidt. 

On September 6, 1847, Henry Thoreau left his small house at Walden Pond and moved back into the town of Concord. Having lived at Waldon Pond for over two years, he was, he would write, “a sojourner in civilized life again.” 

In the early 1960’s a high school freshman watched a quiz show, “College Bowl.” Little did he know how that random act would change his life. Many years later, he tells the story: “The moderator asked what noted book began with the following words. Before he had said fifteen words, one of the college whiz kids  gave the correct answer — Walden by Henry David Thoreau. Then the moderator read the complete sentence, which captivated me” 

 It was the first line in Thoreau’s iconic work: “When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I have built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only.” 

Henry’s sunflowers greeted me as I walked the path to the old farmhouse. This is a peaceful place – this house where Henry David Thoreau was born in 1817. He lived here only eight months. The cold summer caused all the crops to fail and his family had to abandon the farm and move to Concord center where his father ran a store. It was difficult making ends meet in those days.  Life was hard. The family moved around, to Chelmsford then on to Boston before returning to Concord for good when little Henry was five. So Henry David Thoreau grew up in Concord, though not on this farm where he was born.  

Have you ever felt a compelling need to be somewhere? More than a desire to visit a place and more, even, than a wish to learn. A need to experience and to understand? It was that kind of need that drew Kara Snyder of Pittsburgh, PA to Concord, MA this past summer.

A simple green desk made in Concord, Massachusetts, in about 1838 by a cabinet-maker who charged perhaps one dollar for it, had a career in America’s intellectual history entirely out of proportion to its humble origin, because it was Henry Thoreau’s desk. Since it entered the Concord Museum collection, the desk has become a cornerstone of the Museum and a treasured American icon.