Items Tagged with 'thoreau farm'

More than 160 years after his death, Henry David Thoreau remains one of Concord’s most influential voices. His writings on nature, conscience, simplicity, and social responsibility continue to inspire readers around the world. Helping to preserve and share that legacy is the Thoreau Alliance, an organization dedicated to ensuring that Thoreau’s ideas remain accessible, relevant, and alive for future generations.

The Alliance brings together two organizations with deep roots in Thoreau’s story: Thoreau Farm, his birthplace in Concord, and the Thoreau Society, the oldest and largest organization dedicated to the study of a single American author. Together, they serve as a hub for scholarship, education, public programming, and community engagement centered on one of America’s most influential thinkers.

Few American writers are as closely connected to a place as Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). The landscapes of Concord and the surrounding towns—today part of Freedom’s Way National Heritage Area—shaped his ideas, inspired his writing, and helped define a philosophy that continues to influence readers around the world. 

This itinerary follows Thoreau’s journey through the places that mattered most to him. From his birthplace at Thoreau Farm to his final resting place in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, these homes, buildings, fields, forests, and waterways reveal the people and topography that helped form one of America’s most influential thinkers.

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.