Thoreau-Trail-A-Walk-To-Wachusett
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
In Thoreau’s Footsteps A Walk to Wachusett: The Thoreau Trail from Concord to Mount Wachusett and Back Today, more than 150 years after the publication of Walden, Thoreau continues to invite 21st-century people to “go walking” and to live more simply in a hectic complex world. To learn more visit www.freedomsway.org. This information was compiled by Thomas E. Conroy, Ph.D., and Corinne H. Smith, working with Freedom’s Way National Heritage Area. The route is based on Robert M. Young’s hike as outlined in Walking to Wachusett: A Re-Enactment of Henry David Thoreau’s “A Walk to Wachusett.” Some liberties have been taken to make the current trail more accessible to automobiles and bicycles, or to more accurately match Thoreau’s written observations of the landscape. This booklet was originated for distribution at The Thoreau Society Annual Gathering in Concord, Massachusetts, on July 13, 2012. https://sites.google.com/site/fwtrails/thoreau-trails A Walk to Wachusett Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was an author, philosopher, and naturalist who was part of the Transcendentalist movement. He is best known for his "Civil Disobedience" essay, which he wrote after spending a night in jail for failing to pay the state poll tax; and for his two-year retreat to Walden Pond, which he detailed in his second book, Walden; or, Life in the Woods. Though he claimed that he had “travelled a good deal in Concord,” his home, Thoreau was drawn to journey often into surrounding towns and throughout our landscape of central New England. On the morning of Tuesday, July 19, 1842, Henry Thoreau and friend Richard Fuller (one of Margaret Fuller’s brothers) began walking to Mount Wachusett from Concord. Their path led them through the towns of Concord, Acton, Assabet Village (now called Maynard), Stow, Bolton, Lancaster, Sterling, and Princeton. They stayed overnight at an inn at the Sterling-Princeton line, then hiked up the mountain the following morning. After spending one night on the summit, the duo walked back down and retraced their steps to Lancaster. There they took a more northern route into Harvard, perhaps staying at an inn at the town common. On July 22, the two men parted company, as Richard made his way north to Groton and Henry headed east to Concord. Henry appears to have stopped at an unknown farmhouse to pass that night. He arrived home in the early morning of Saturday, July 23. Thoreau’s essay about the experience, “A Walk to Wachusett,” was published in Boston Miscellany of Literature in January 1843. Today we can mirror the men’s 1842 route by using existing two- lane rural roads. Gravel or paved shoulders are not always present, however; so this “trail” is most appropriate for cars and bicycles, and not necessarily for casual hikers on foot. Travelers will cover the dynamic terrain of central Massachusetts and advance from an elevation of 130’ in Concord to more than 2000’ on top of the mountain. They will pass through expanses of farmland and woodland, and will be drawn to pause at orchards and other points of interest. They will see stone walls and buildings that have been standing for more than a century and a half. The 66-mile loop would make a perfect day trip on a sunny autumn day. In Henry Thoreau’s time, Mount Wachusett could be seen from some of the heights around Concord, since the landscape was then far less forested than it is today. Thoreau’s poem at the beginning of his essay honors the mountain he and his friend were aiming for. But special I remember thee, Wachusett, who like me Standest alone without society. Thy far blue eye, A remnant of the sky, Seen through the clearing or the gorge, Or from the windows on the forge, Doth leaven all it passes by, Nothing is true, But stands ‘tween me and you, Thou western pioneer, Who know’st not shame nor fear, By venturous spirit driven, Under the eaves of heaven, And can’st expand thee there, And breathe enough of air? Upholding heaven, holding down earth, Thy pastime from thy birth, Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other; May I approve myself thy worthy brother! ~ “A Walk to Wachusett” Literary note: All further excerpts of Thoreau’s observations come from the essay “A Walk to Wachusett” unless otherwise cited. Directions and sites to be found along the way 1. Start at Concord Center. • Colonial Inn, 48 Monument Square (The right-hand section of this building was once owned by Thoreau’s aunts.) • Masonic Lodge, Monument Square (The site of the old common school, where Thoreau taught for a few weeks, on the first floor.) • Jail site, Monument Square, noted by a small granite marker beyond a sizable lawn. (The site of Thoreau’s one night in jail and the inspiration for writing the essay now known as “Civil Disobedience.”) 2. Follow Route 62 West through Concord, West Concord, Acton, into downtown Maynard. Note: Thoreau and Fuller’s original path has been altered here in order to more easily accommodate automobiles and bicycles. The men probably used present-day Old Stow Road, Independence Street, Parker Street, Concord Street, and Summer Street between West Concord and Stow. Old Stow Road is no longer a through street.) • Concord Free Public Library, 129 Main Street, Concord. • Thoreau-Alcott House or Yellow House [private residence], 255 Main Street, Concord. (Where the Thoreaus lived from 1850 on; and Henry died in the room to the right of the front door on May 6, 1862.) • MBTA Concord Depot [a trail entry point] • Sudbury River • South Bridge Boat House, 496 Main Street, Concord. • Former Damon Mill (now Damonmill Square), West Concord. (This building dates to 1862, & replaced another Damon Mill that Thoreau surveyed on the same site in May 1859.) • MBTA West Concord Depot [a trail entry point] • Knox Trail • Former Assabet Manufacturing Company tower clock and mill buildings (now Clock Tower Place), Maynard. • Assabet River At a cool and early hour on a pleasant morning in July, my companion and I passed rapidly through Acton and Stow, stopping to rest and refresh us on the bank of a small stream, a tributary of the Assabet, in the latter town. As we traversed the cool woods of Acton, with stout staves in our hands, we were cheered by the song of the red-eye, the thrushes, the phoebe, and the cuckoo; and as we passed through the open country, we inhaled the fresh scent of every field, and all nature lay passive, to be viewed and travelled. 3. Turn right and follow Route 117 West through Maynard, Stow and Bolton. • Marble Hill Farm, 29 Great Road, Stow • Stowaway Inn Bed & Breakfast, 271 Great Road, Stow. • Potash Brook • Randall Library, 19 Crescent Street, Stow • Derby Ridge Farm, Stow • Pompositticut School, Stow • Harvard Road (leads to Wildlife Viewing Area in Delaney Wildlife Management Area) • Stow Gardens, Stow • Elizabeth Brook • Gulf station • Applefield Farm, Stow • Bolton Spring Farm, 149 Main Street, Bolton • Great Brook • Slater’s Restaurant, 356 Main Street, Bolton This part of our route lay through the country of hops, which plant perhaps supplies the want of the vine in American scenery, and may remind the traveller of Italy, and the South of France. … The mower in the adjacent meadow could not tell us the name of the brook on whose banks we had rested, or whether it had any, but his younger companion, perhaps his brother, knew that it was Great Brook. 4. Pass over I-495 (Exit 27). • Colonial Candies, 47 Sugar Road, Bolton. • Salt Box Country Store, 626 Main Street, Bolton • Nashoba Valley Winery, 100 Wattaquaddock Hill Road, Bolton In Bolton, while we rested on the rails of a cottage fence, the strains of music which issued from within, probably in compliment to us, sojourners, reminded us that thus far men were fed by the accustomed pleasures. So soon did we, wayfarers, begin to learn that man’s life is rounded with the same few facts, the same simple relations everywhere, and it is vain to travel to find it new. 5. Turn left/south onto Wilder Road. Before noon we had reached the highlands overlooking the valley of Lancaster, (affording the first fair and open prospect into the west,) and there, on the top of a hill, in the shade of some oaks, near to where a spring bubbled out from a leaden pipe, we rested during the heat of the day, reading Virgil, and enjoying the scenery. It was such a place as one feels to be on the outside of the earth, for from it we could, in some measure, see the form and structure of the globe. There lay Wachusett, the object of our journey, lowering upon us with unchanged proportions, though with a less ethereal aspect than had greeted our morning gaze, while further north, in successive order, slumbered its sister mountains along the horizon. The lay of the land hereabouts is well worthy the attention of the traveller. The hill on which we were resting made part of an extensive range, running from southwest to northeast, across the country, and separating the waters of the Nashua from those of the Concord, whose banks we had left in the morning; and by bearing in mind this fact, we could easily determine whither each brook was bound that crossed our path. Parallel to this, and fifteen miles further west, beyond the deep and broad valley in which lie Groton, Shirley, Lancaster, and Boylston, runs the Wachusett range, in the same general direction.