Literary Concord

Quietly nestled atop a hill at the rear of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is Author’s Ridge, a leafy crest crowded with the graves of the founding fathers of American literary greatness. Within this secluded ridge, each gravestone is appropriate fashioned to the life it memorializes.

Henry David Thoreau’s grave is a humble marble stone no larger than a book. Rising up out of a bed of pine needles, it rather deliberately reads, "HENRY".

Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of America’s first great novelists, rests eternally beneath an arched marble stone that bears only his last name in proud lettering.

Marked by a flat stone is the grave of Louisa May Alcott, the truly splendid novelist of such books as Little Women and Work. That she was raised in a family rich in literary greatness is immediately evident from the stone that stands beside hers. A. Bronson Alcott, proud father of Louisa, was the founder of American Transcendentalism, a school of thought that had an enormous influence on the writers buried around him.

At the back of the ridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s gravestone is sectioned off by rusty chains. It is a large, rough-hewn slab of granite. Moss-covered, jagged, and impervious, it indeed is an appropriate testament to the mind that wrote: "I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty."

During summer months when Walden Pond is a crowded swimming hole, one wonders if Henry David Thoreau would have had the same epiphanies he wrote of in Walden if his long hours of quiet contemplation had been disrupted by the sounds of screaming children and bullish lifeguards. Concordians love Walden Pond on a hot day, and the pond is imbued with little literary majesty for many of those who are looking to cool off with a dip. However, regardless if it is the muse for a solitary 19th century Transcendentalist or the playground for spirited children, Walden Pond is a site of great energy and life.

It is best to visit Walden Pond in the evening, an hour or two before closing (sunset), when the last swimmers are rolling up their beach mats and drying off. It is then, I believe, when the color of the pond is most like Thoreau described it: "it is of a yellowish tint next to the shore where you can see the sand, then a light green, which gradually deepens into a uniform dark green." A walk around the pond will take less than an hour. There is a narrow trail that leads hikers along the shore; in the few spots where the terrain is rugged, an easier alternate route always presents itself. On an embankment just above the pond, the Boston Commuter Rail passes by frequently. It whistles to break the silence just as it did in Thoreau’s time, reminding me of his warning: "We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us."

The site where Thoreau’s cabin once stood is now marked only by the archeological remains of the foundation. The reconstruction of the cabin has been erected on a plot adjacent to the parking lot, about 500 feet from the pond. While this spot does not recapture the atmosphere of seclusion in which Thoreau spent two years, two months, and two days, a walk inside will definitely give one the idea of the minimalist existence Thoreau relished. "Simplify, simplify, simplify." Indeed.

While it sees the largest number of visitors in the summer, Walden Pond is splendid during any season. Ice fishing is a popular recreation in the winter; the foliage draws hikers in autumn. Regardless of when you visit, refresh yourself with a bit of Thoreau. If Walden proves too cumbersome a task or Resistance to Civil Government too militant, a simple quote might do: "The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it."