Walden

I've always, for a reason, been attracted to the Transcendentalist writers. Thoreau, Emerson, Alcott and the rest of them. Over the years, I read them all. It's not particularity easy reading either. Back then, they wrote in a style that was exacting. Each sentence is packed, stuffed full of meaning. The words of the sentences are fashioned w/o mortar and there are no gaps as it all fits with precision.  It's that tight.  As you read, you have to bite off a piece and chew it carefully or you won't comprehend what the hell they're talking about. It took me, casually reading, Emerson's "Self Reliance," about a month.

I, on the other hand, write like I have an extra chromosome.I'm easy to understand unless my sentence structure leaves you going, "Huh? What?...He put up a first draft again!"

It's slow going for a 21^st century reader. Especially Emerson, like I said...He's like eating a whole rib eye covered in bread crumbs, butter and fudge. When you're done, you've just consumed 8,500 calories. You lie like a gorged seal on the beach, moaning for having eaten too many fish.

The first I read was Thoreau, his Civil Disobedience treatise, in St Rays. His complaints were slavery and the Mexican-American war which disgusted him to no end so he decided NOT to support the gov't and refused to pay, for six years, his taxes. Well, don't short Uncle Sugar or they'll come for you and they did. They chucked him in jail but someone (probably his aunt) paid the tax and he was sprung the next day. Being ripping pissed off about it all, he wrote that propaganda piece that went straight up the gov'ts ass a mile.

Yay First Admendment! What balls!

Thoreau, I think, coined the phrase about “marching to a different drummer” and that he did for all his life. What I liked about him, was his never-ending ability to give a real stiff, upright middle finger to those who didn't like the way he lived his life. He was a non-conformist w/o any regret. I'm no Thoreau...but...I do admire and have, in some sense, lived a life in a certain other way. If you read this blog, you can discern that I was, for the most part, something of a feral child who was left to his own devices due to a father far too busy climbing the corporate ladder and a mother who abdicated her role due to illness. I was let loose young and learned to like my freedom...very much, to the point of feeling abraded when others tried to put a curb on it.  There were a couple of instances when others, outside this family and feeling it was their duty to interfere, tried to "put me on the right path."  After I scrutinized those actions, most I found did it out of a religious bent and I REJECTED them and their actions outright. I had too many run ins with busy-body evangelical types. I found most of them to be unbalanced anyway. I witnessed the inner workings of their families, the rules and their kids...who were fucked up in their own way. 

Thoreau, probably sick to death of having to deal with the mighty, bustling city of Concord in 1845, gave them the finger as well and took off for the woods not too far out of town for two years to chill with chipmunks, squirrels and bunnies and wrote “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.” That I read too and it's no travel journal. While writing about his journey, he has excursions into what he think life's all about (like anyone's figured that out yet) and other opinions of the fast disappearance of colonial New England to the Industrial Age. Thoreau could be preachy, selfishly focused on himself and hypocritical. He had his demons as we all do.  After two years with the sparrows and mice, he returned to the Megalopolis of Concord and wrote "Walden."

I've wanted to see it, where it happened, stand on the very ground where they were. To see where those left winger/no-good-radical-freaks were romping about and causing trouble for everyone. So I went finally.

Walden Pond. This is it. I didn't know it had a beach. There are warning signs all over begging you not to swim in it as kettle ponds are notoriously cold and deep. Walden is 100 feet deep in some places. There are no lifeguards to pull your silly ass out if you happen to swim through a cold patch and freeze up and sink w/o a sound.The water is clear, probably drinkable and the quiet is deafening.

This me holding Walden Pond beach sand. Now I can say I did it.

Great! What I want now is to be misdiagnosed for 8 months until they get it right, Lyme disease.

When you reach the actual spot where Thoreau's cabin was, there's this sign. It's the opening lines to “Walden.” That pile of rocks next to it is all the people over the years who have left them as mementos. They scoured the area so clean of rocks that I couldn't put one there myself.

Archaeologists found the site back in the 1940's. There's nothing there but sandy dirt.

It's hard to read but the stone says, “this is where we found the actual chimney foundation” and thereby nailing the spot where Thoreau's cabin was.

I stood where the front door probably would've been and this is presumably what Thoreau saw when he looked toward the pond.

This railroad is completely up to date and current. In his time, Thoreau would write about hearing the steam trains rolling by the pond and waving to the passengers on them. I remember reading the passages about this rail and it was weird to actually see it finally.

This is what his home looked like. They restored it and if you want to get an idea of how big it is? The shed in your backyard is a close approximation.

Spacious huh? I guess that's all he needed. A place to write, sleep and a battered old stove to heat the place and cook

I suppose, if you got this thing screaming hot, it would turn the inside of the cabin into Miami for a while

.

I'm sitting at the faux desk where Thoreau wrote. The real one is in Concord museum and I'm sure they wouldn't let me sit in that one.

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Concord, MA

Well, let me warn you about traveling there. There are about 790 5-k bicycle groups tear-assing all over the town and roads, so drive carefully! There is no real 5-k event, just a ton of weekend warriors with their 10 speeds, mountain bikes, wearing their skin tight aerodynamic body suits. They travel in packs and have the airs of "this road is for bikes ONLY, you user of the gasoline engine!"  I guess I shouldn't bitch, I used to be one of them when I was on a health kick a while back. I never wore any protective equipment and probably looked like some guy who had to travel by bike, due to a DWI.

Other than that, Concord is old, very OLD! It's also very picturesque, post-cardy with many homes looking like what was described in any Nathaniel Hawthorne brooding novel. You can traverse the entire town in about 5 minutes doing about 20mph. I'd advise you DO 20mph, it's too easy to run over a biker.

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Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Thank god for GPS coordinates. I found all the graves where these Transcendentalist girl and guy writers are buried.

They're all up there, ontop of that knoll.

This is the Thoreau family grave. 

Henry himself! I guess back then, you bought a plot, then placed the major family name marker on it, buried dad and mom under that and any kids or relatives get tiny little stones. Henry got his and people are piling up stones and acorns on it. All those tree roots...they must have invaded his coffin and him. Henry is part of the trees, leaves and whatnot now.

Nathaniel Hawthorne of Seven Gables fame. What I thought was cool were all the pens people left on it. I won't get into it but Nathaniel was a depressed, worn out character who lived in the shadows of Concord. Well, when your great-great grandfather was abusing, prosecuting and hanging witches in Salem a while back, the family legacy is a dark one.There's probably a penchant via genetics for depression in that family as well. If ever read House of the Seven Gables, better not do it on a gray, rainy November day or you'll mop around for days. Nothing says Puritan Gray like that novel.

Louisa May Alcott. She wrote “Little Women” and was one of the very first feminists. Again, the pens left as a memento..cool!  See how Concord was a nest of liberal scum and villainy?

The Alcott Family plot. The big marker is for Louisa's dad, Bronson. He founded the very first hippy-dippy commune in the United States ever, call Fruitlands. Fruitlands didn't even have a chance. Bronson made sure that anyone that decided to come there could follow any whimsy, idea or whatnot to further their “growth” as a person. Also was the rule that farm animals were “people too” and could not be used for farm work. Well, when you have a bunch of diaphanous writer/artist types traipsing around the woods and NOT planting enough food for winter...you get the idea. They did try to plant some corn and such, but when you don't use beasts of burden to turn the soil and whatnot, you don't have enough to live through the winter. Fruitlands died as fast as it was founded. Had they marijuana, cocaine, amyl nitrite...they would've failed even faster.

The King Transcendentalist of them All, Ralph Waldo Emerson. He thought, "Screw the Puritans, Catholics and all of them...I will decide for MYSELF!" His marker is a strange quartz boulder. The picture doesn't do it much justice as it cannot pick up the weird bending of light within the crystal producing a rainbow effect.

Orchard House, where Louisa and her Dad Bronson Alcott ended up after the Fruitlands disaster. She wrote “Little Women” here.

This weird place is behind the Alcott home. It's where Bronson held his talks, salon and groove-vibe-hang loose think tank. This is is the very first Esalen type Institute of it's kind. The current Esalen is in Big Sur now, where Hunter Thompson, the Beach Boys hung out.   Primal Scream Therapy and Fritz Perls Gestalt psychology were either invented or practiced there. I have little idea what Bronson invented here in his backyard, I ought to catch up on him.

Anyways, it was cool to finally see where all these vanguards of American progressive thought were roaming around.