TERRE HAUTE —
I first met Henry David Thoreau as a young man in college, when I was most often in blue jeans and flannel shirts and in need of a haircut. I carried his most famous book, “Walden,” in my ratty red backpack, not to be different or to transcend reality, but because he wrote from the heart, simply and honestly. There has been a copy of it on my bookshelf ever since.
I got reacquainted with my old friend here last week; I loaded my family and too much luggage into our van and drove nearly 1,100 miles to this beautiful Massachusetts town, not on a pilgrimage or for hero worship, but to reconnect with a man who lived a good and quiet life, and to do so on his home tromping grounds.
We found Concord a remarkable place. Here, the first shots of the American Revolution were exchanged, and in the very middle of town sits “Monument Square,” a simple stone obelisk bearing the names of all the townsmen who fought in the “War of Rebellion” against the British.
We visited that battlefield, and the Old North Bridge, where the shot “heard ’round the world” was fired. But even in those most historically sacred of spots, we found Thoreau, a quiet revolutionary in his own right, walking through the scenes again and again.
His friends seemed to be with him often, as well, for it was within shouting distance of the house built by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s grandfather in 1770 that the famous battle took place, and it was in that house that Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote his “Mosses From An Old Manse,” a remarkable collection of short stories. We enjoyed wandering the grounds there, visiting the graves of fallen British soldiers, and standing on the boat dock and looking north toward the lazy river that flowed beneath the bridge.
We also, of course, made our way to Walden Pond — a 60-acre lake really — that sits just west of town. It is the site of the famous 10 feet by 15 feet cabin that Thoreau built on property owned by Emerson, who wanted nothing in exchange but the labor of clearing out a patch of briars and planting a stand of pine trees. Thoreau lived at Walden for two years, two months and two days, not in an attempt to drop out of society, but rather to try to live independently of society’s trappings and expectations. It was not unusual for Thoreau to have done such a thing; he was seen, after all, as an odd duck by those who knew him. But he was no hermit; he frequently walked into town, and could even hear the trains running from his spot near one of the pond’s beautiful, calm coves.
Henry David Thoreau (originally David Henry) was born in July 1817, not long after our second war with England had ended. His father, who struggled financially, hit upon the idea of being a pencil maker, a profession that Henry took up himself when he occasionally needed money. The family, with the help of Henry’s mother taking in boarders, eventually moved to Concord from Boston; Thoreau’s grandmother already lived there.
The third of four children, Henry graduated from Harvard in 1837, and almost immediately fell into step with Concord’s celebrated philosophers and writers — Emerson and Hawthorne and Bronson Alcott and Ellery Channing being the most prominent. He began a career as a teacher, but when he was chastised for sparing the rod too often in his classroom, he quit, worked a while for his father (he improved several of the techniques and machines that his father used), then started a private school of his own with his brother, John. In fact, all four of the Thoreau children became teachers of some sort and never married.
The time he spent with his brother was the best of Thoreau’s life, I think. Not only did the school prosper — the brothers were innovative and took their students on field trips and nature walks — but also Henry and John found the time to take a rowboat trip up the Concord and Merrimack rivers together, eventually ending up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Thoreau wrote his “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” while he lived at Walden Pond, dedicating it to John, who, already suffering from tuberculosis, died in 1842, the victim of tetanus.
John’s death ended Henry’s career as a school teacher. He took work as Emerson’s handyman and gardener, tutored Emerson’s brother’s children in New York, helped his parents build a new home in Concord — he dug and laid all of the stone for the foundations — lectured, surveyed and wrote. In the spring of 1845, he went to Walden to build his cabin.
My Hoosier family visited Walden Pond on a cool, cloudy day, and we dodged sprinkles as we walked the paths around it in search of the place where Henry built his cabin and planted the beans made famous in his book. My daughter and son, too old to be called kids now, endured the history lessons and nature walks for a good while, but couldn’t have understood what being this close to Thoreau meant to their English major parents who seemed to wander around in a reverie. We were in no hurry to leave the place, standing a good while on the edge of the pond to watch a trio of brave souls swimming in the cold water, and we gazed at the far shore as if we’d seen Henry himself plumbing the depths of the pond in his row boat. The water was as clear as Thoreau said it was 165 years ago, so clear that it was obvious why Boston’s “Ice King,” Frederick Tudor, harvested ice there for years.
Our first stop was the replica of Thoreau’s cabin that sits near the main gate of the park; it was built using Henry’s own description in “Walden” as a guide, although it was more than likely the price tag for the newer version was higher than the $28.50 Thoreau spent on his. As interesting as its shingles and sparse furniture and woodshed were, we wanted to see the spot where he had built his own place. In 1945, exactly a hundred years from the time Thoreau moved into his cabin, archeologist Roland Robbins discovered the site, which is today commemorated with a cairn of stones and a plaque, and, of course, the beauty of the pond and the scent of pine.
Thoreau wrote in “Walden,” that he “went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” I went to his woods to feel a little of what he lived.
I believe that Henry Thoreau, the oddball who was often seen wading in streams and playing games with children, who gave lectures on walking and wild apples, who cleaned wells and repaired fences for pocket money, who played his flute as his boat drifted down the river, did live that life and learned its lessons.
After he died at just 45 in the front parlor sickbed of his parents’ Concord home, three-fourths of the town’s children followed his funeral procession to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. His old friend, Emerson, said of him, “Wherever there is virtue, wherever there is beauty, he will find a home.”
We were glad we found his home at Walden.
Mike Lunsford can be reached at hickory913@aol.com, or by regular mail c/o the Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Mike’s Web page can be found at mikelunsford.com.
Mike Lunsford
The Off Season: Why I went to the woods …
- Mike Lunsford
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We’ve created a honey of a problem
The Dutch clover is making its appearance in my yard this week. A cooler-than-usual spring has slowed its arrival by a few days, but it is here for now, bringing the honeybees and bumblebees with it.
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A walk in the woods
I went for a walk in the woods one day last week after work. It was a warm and green afternoon, and a fresh blue breeze blew in from the west like a new spring friend.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Twain’s Sawyer helps us yearn for ‘wilderness of childhood’
My cousin, Roger, stopped in one day last summer for a glass of tea and a little conversation. Rog has lived an hour’s drive away for years and now, and besides summer reunions, I don’t see him nearly often enough. He’s a good man who has raised a good family, and he owns a healthy sense of appreciation for not only the life he has now, but also the lives we had years ago as kids.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Cheerful green of wheat fights winter blahs
There is a light drizzle of freezing rain tapping at the door of my cabin today. It is little more than a week before the words I am writing are due to appear on your breakfast table or work desk with your morning coffee and scrambled eggs. But I write when I can, and today, despite a full schedule of televised football games, and the stacks of ungraded papers in my briefcase, and a good book lying open on my nightstand, I am clacking away on a keyboard to the whir of a heater and the steady drip of my gutters.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On the simple joys of watching it snow ...
It began to snow about 20 minutes ago, as I write this, light, wind-driven flakes that fall silently into my woods as I watch from a window.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On this day above all, ‘Peace on earth, good will to men’
More than a year after his wife’s death, the great American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote in his diary on Christmas Day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering a Lefty Frizzell-kind of Christmas ...
My brother and sister and I sat around a Thanksgiving dinner table a month ago, shifting in our seats just enough to make our yet-to-be digested turkey sit a little more easily, and, as we often do when we get together, we reminisced about our childhoods for a while.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The wonders of wading in ‘The Iridescence of a Shallow Stream’
I have no idea how many times I have written a story that begins with the wistful phrase, “When I was a boy. ...”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Little man who came to dinner changes feel of household
My 7-year-old nephew, Carson, came to visit us last week. That in itself isn’t earth-shattering news, for he often drops by with one of his parents or the other, the last time dressed as a ghoul for Halloween. But for a couple like Joanie and me, whose youngest child is now nearly two decades past Carson’s age, having a little guy like him in the house, even for a few hours, takes a bit of adjusting.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Reflections: a bit of red glass and our daily thanksgivings
I sat in the half-light of my old desk lamp a few nights ago, a chilly wind blowing in from the northwest that made me appreciative of my long-sleeved shirt and purring heater.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Growing up — and ‘old’ — with many mouths to feed
At our family reunion last summer, I asked my brother if I could borrow a pair of photo albums he had put together. Over the past couple of years, I have committed quite a few of our family’s old yellowing snapshots to newly cropped and digitalized lives, and I wanted to do the same with some of the pictures John has collected for himself.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Violets in October – a pleasant surprise
I guess I don’t pay much attention to the weather forecasts these days because it surprised me a bit when our furnace kicked on a few nights ago.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A library is a good thing — even a little, homegrown one
I grew up with libraries, and I can’t imagine there ever being a time when I won’t want to wander one exploring it like some bookworm-Balboa, finding an author or title that I never really knew existed before. Creating those “Eureka” moments seems to be a dying interest now that so many of us download and digest books electronically without ever really considering that there just might be some hidden gem we’d have liked even more had we simply stumbled upon it on a shelf by accident. I think those moments of discovery are not unlike kicking up lost treasure a mile from where X marks the spot.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘soothsayer’ who came to dinner
I’ve had a good time opening my mail these past few weeks. Sure, I still received the usual junk about lower credit card rates and satellite television packages, but the genuine letters made me smile; most were about a story I wrote in late August.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The agony of de‘feet’ has this writer on his heels
I don’t know if I can electrocute myself by using a computer and soaking my feet in a pan of warm water at the same time, but I am contemplating taking the risk. My feet, particularly the right foot, have staged a 10-digit rebellion over the past few months. After a half-century of commendable service, my pods are screaming to be taken in for repairs, a big inconvenience for a guy who works on his feet all day and whose “sole” form of serious exercise is putting one foot in front of another walking the local roadways.
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Mike Lunsford: Summer’s hidden beauty worth the wait
The great naturalist John Burroughs once said that nature teaches more than she preaches. I can’t recall a summer where that rings true more than this one, for that old sun of ours truly taught us a thing or two these past three months.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time to redefine the concept of ‘assisted living’
Although it has been nearly two months now, I can’t forget the few afternoon hours I spent on a hot June day this summer at a local “assisted living” facility in town. I had been asked to speak to a group of men there about Father’s Day, but for most part, the wonderful old guys who came to listen certainly made my day more memorable than I did theirs.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Observations on smooth stones and blue-green water…
It was raining when I began to write this. Although no one could rightfully call what we got this afternoon a “downpour,” it was nice to have my windows open to hear the steady drops of a passing shower tapping on my dry-as-dust deck and hard-as-concrete yard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: This summer has us recalling the heat of ’36
It was “only” 99 degrees one afternoon last week when I decided to work on a backyard deck. With a jack and a drill and a little more sweat than I wanted to invest in the project, I went about the business of leveling its sags and dips a bit. The sun pounded down on my head and shoulders like a thug’s blackjack, but as I packed my tools and drank a glass of cool water under a big maple tree a few hours later, I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I’ve been these past few dusty and drought-stricken weeks. I have worked under this summer’s heat lamp for only a few hours at a time, but God help the roofers and utility linesmen and firemen, and so many others, who are out in it day after long hot day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We had no better friend than Andy Taylor
The world is a sadder place now that Andy Griffith has died, but at least we still have Andy Taylor.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Wading deeper into the subject of Blue Herons
Like a relative who has worn out his welcome, the hot, parched weather of this young summer has already overstayed its visit with us, so my wife and I have found ourselves walking our road later in the evenings to keep our feet cool and our backs dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Thanking two dads whose gifts have never stopped coming…
It is nearly a week until Father’s Day, but I have had my dad, and my father-in-law — a second dad to me — on my mind today. I wrote about both men just a few weeks ago, but I have set my mind to write about them again anyway. I don’t want this story to be sad; they both loved to laugh and wouldn’t want that. No, I just wanted to tell them hello, and to thank them again for what they still do for me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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