Nearby: Walden

For months I waited to see Walden Pond. I safeguarded the visit from poor weather or imperfect health and I waited until the moment was just right to make my pilgrimage. I left early on a Saturday morning, while my neighborhood slept off the fatigue from the work week. Yet when I arrived at Walden Pond, there were already swimmers, already impassioned walkers like myself clutching the beauty of the early morning before it slipped away. Walden Pond is smaller than most people imagine, but no less enchanting, especially on a day in late June when the sun and trees play a game of reflections along the surface of the water. A couple in their sixties led their canoe through them; a sole swimmer let them surround her. And I took pictures.

The trails beyond the pond were filled with the glistening magic of of a New England summer's day, and also a great many bugs that were more than delighted I was there. Like every other visitor I suppose, I thought of Thoreau and his wish to 'live deliberately,'-

which made me ache for Downeast Maine and the time I spent there with my mother and my dogs and the firewood we used to keep the home warm. I am the child of a city, still very much devoted to sky scrapers and cafes and the ideas that swarm in both, but when I can I race away-to the woods and to the philosophy espoused in Walden.  

Nearby: Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

I've been quite busy as of late and haven't had as many opportunities for adventuring as I would like. Hopefully, that will soon change and as the weather turns for the better so will my schedule. These pictures are from a trip to Sleepy Hollow cemetery in Concord, where so many of our beloved American authors are buried. It was a lovely thing to find them buried so close to one another-very sweet and appropriate, this collection of creative souls resting on a ridge together. 

Nearby: Old Manse

Today I ventured to nearby Concord, a place I have visited only once before. 

That visit occurred about ten years past and my memories of the visit are quite fragmented. As such, I arrived to Concord this morning with fresh eyes and a hope to hop from one place to the next-first, I stopped at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery followed by Louisa May Alcott's Orchard House (which I will write about in subsequent posts) and then I headed to Old Manse, pictured above. Concord is such an exhilarating place to visit because of it's significance in both 18th century colonial history and 19th century literary tradition. It's like a playground for history lovers! 

Old Manse is a National Historic Landmark, and for good reason. Ralph Waldo Emerson AND Nathaniel Hawthorne both resided here for a short time. In fact, today I stood in the very room where Emerson's famous essay "Nature" was penned.  A small, simple room but one full of light, as you might expect. Later, when Nathaniel and his wife Sophia lived there, they etched messages on the windows that you can still read today-entertaining, sweet messages.  I wonder if they imagined they would last. But that was not the sum of Hawthorne's production in the house-he did in fact write a short story collection entitled Mosses from an Old Manse that serves as a tribute to the home. 

 The house was originally built in 1770 for a minister and is in a typical Georgian style of the period. Unfortunately, no pictures were allowed within the interior of the house, but I actually found the grounds and surrounding area more interesting-mainly because the location of the shot heard around the world is only just a 5 minute walk away, if that. So it was here, in April of 1775, that the American Revolution officially began. How wonderful it must have been for Emerson and Hawthorne to have a view of the very spot as they wrote in Old Manse.