A Pilgrimage of Sorts

I sold myself at the service auction to give a tour of Walden pond, with stories and quotations from Henry David Thoreau. People bought it! So yesterday we went, never mind that the forecast was for showers. The forecast was wrong, and we had a great time. It had been a little challenging to choose what to say about Thoreau's Walden journey to a group that had not, like the Adult Enrichment class I gave a few years ago, actually read the book first. And I wasn't sure I wanted to focus on "Walden" itself. There was a passage in "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" that talked about places near Manchester NH -- the village of Amoskeag, the little mountains called Uncanoonuc, the lake above the dam, and the village of Hooksett. So I read that on the way from here to there. But also, we wanted to get to know each other. Several of us had taken different names -- I pointed out that Thoreau had done that, too, having started out as David Henry.

There was the background of his going -- the tragedy of losing his brother to lockjaw, the disappointing stay in New York City, the threat of a particularly stupid war with Mexico, the growing concern that there would be Civil war, and his own father's desire for a nice, big, house, which Henry helped him build. And the idea that this was not all that far from town and dinner invitations and visits from friends, a place more of open fields than it is now, with a stand of pine woods that Emerson had bought and offered him as a place to build a retreat. And the pond, the lovely pond, still there looking placid and inviting.

And some quotations that showed his interest in enlightenment, a spiritual experience about which he and his friends were newly excited, now that translations from the Sanskrit were becoming available. The important thing is to wake up and stay awake (Richardson says Thoreau himself suffered from narcolepsy, so this would have been of interest on more than one level). And to live in constant anticipation of the dawn. The fact that this period was one of great productivity, the period when Thoreau wrote his only two book-length pieces, and grew so much as a writer and speaker, that was important to mention. And that he had gone to spend that famous night in jail from his lodging in the woods.

The personal things drew their attention -- who he loved, how he dressed, playing the flute by moonlight while floating in his boat in the pond, his sister bringing pies from home, his struggle with TB. His last words, prompted by someone asking if he could see the other side of that dark river separating this life from the next -- "One life at a time."

The weather was perfect, the company was engaging, our lunch at the Walden Grill was delicious, and the experience of Concord today was fun. I guess it was a pilgrimage, at least for me, to revisit our holy curmudgeon's places and refresh my sense of him. I was glad of the occasion.