DC Reflections

Crying on Thoreau's cabin

Concord, Mass -- My tears surprised me this morning, probably because they burst from my eyes before I got out of my car. The mere sight of a sign pointing to Walden Pond was all it took for the gusher to start.

The place and the man who made it famous had lived only in my imagination for two and a half decades before I finally made today's pilgrimage. My relationship with Henry David Thoreau began when I was in high school. Today I found myself sitting on the very spot that held his cabin ... the place where he wrote so many of the words that would guide me through my life to find its joys and comfort me in its pains.

I pulled out my own journals today and sat on one of the stones that marks the outline of where his cabin stood.

I see Walden Pond as he saw it from this very door. This place is so much more magnificent than I had imagined. People have always told me that the pond was small and the area too developed. Though I can imagine the tiny beach fills with swimmers and sunbathers on warm days, this is on the other side. The pond is a big one as ponds go and more resembles a small lake.

Here, in the back of the woods where Thoreau lived, it is quiet. I hear only the sounds of acorns falling, the leaves rustling in the wind while turning red and yellow by the moment, birds chirping, and the occasional person passing by. A few fat drops of this morning's rain pelt these pages as they dive from the tree tops. This place seems filled with as much solitude now as it did then.

If you have not had the occasion to get to know Thoreau yourself, you should race to a book store and buy a copy today. It could change your life the way it did mine. Thoreau can help you figure out what's important, give you the courage to do things you didn't know you could do, and make you see the world as if your eye sight suddenly magnified. He'll also give you a giggle or two. (The scholars often forget the man could crack a joke or two.)

I took Thoreau's words to heart at an early age because he spoke to me both about the meaning of life and what it means to be a writer.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately," he wrote, "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 wanted to live deep and suck out the marrow of life, and to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."

He also placed inside me a land conservation ethic before I knew what the term meant. (It's certainly no coincidence that I now work as a communications director for The Wilderness Society.) He affirmed my love of solitude. He taught me the virtue of living simply. He showed me that a man can in the course of his time get as much out of life as he puts back into it.  

Perhaps more important than any of those things, he helped give me the courage to chase every wild dream I conjured up ... to spend my life taking big swings, to overcome failure, and, well, to thump my chest a little when I pulled off something spectacular.

"As I have said, I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up."

Thoreau's words lingered in my head as I sat there scribbling in my own journal, whose pages are now

approaching 7,000 in number. I wrote that I could sit there all day writing about how much Thoreau means to me but that I could do more of that later.

Now I think it's time to honor him by continuing my own walk in the woods so that I might drink in this experience more deeply. I can spend all day here if I want. "Time," after all, "is but the stream I go a fishing in."

Then I pulled out the dog-eared copy of Walden Pond I've kept with me for the past 17 years -- its pages held together with equal parts hope and tape -- and read a few passages aloud to myself.

I resumed my walk and felt Thoreau's presence so strongly that I kept staring at the mud as if expecting to see his footprints and discern which way he was going today. My mind, as it always does when I get a good hike going, slowed down. Part of the reason I came on this trip was to think more about some of the new dreams I harbor for what I'd like to do with my life in the years ahead ... to set a few compass points that I might check each morning.

I inhaled a quick lunch and drove to the Concord Museum to see Thoreau's desk. I also saw one of the lanterns placed above Boston as old Paul Revere made his famous ride. Both artifacts were thrilling discoveries as I didn't know the museum existed before today.

Nor did I realize Thoreau was buried here and that his grave still exists.

I quickly found his resting place at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and was overcome in a different way, feeling an urge to pull out my journal again and write him a letter. It went like this:

Dear Mr. Thoreau,

I sit now by your grave, Mr. Thoreau. I confess I only moments ago learned I've been mispronouncing your name all these years. A woman at the Concord Museum said you pronounced it like you were a very thorough man, not like I throw a baseball. Everybody else gets it wrong, too, so I hope you can forgive us.

I can't believe how tiny your tombstone is. It's like a baby's. It can't be more than nine inches high and wide. And it just says "Henry." No epitaph. No nothing. Your name and birth and death dates are as you know with the rest of your family's. I see your parents John and Cynthia and your siblings Helen and Sophia.

I guess I expected something grand, something that in death represents how big you were -- though I realize your fame multiplied by an infinite factor as the years went on after you died. Still, it's puzzling. Such a humble little stone for a man who made such a big impact on the world -- not only during your time but in the generations that have followed.

I came here today to thank you for everything you've done for me. I'm not really sure how to properly thank a dead man but I at least wanted to visit you to pay my respects. I've known you for more than half of my life, which puts you in the company of but a select few of my friends.

How do I thank you? You saw that I spent the morning at your cabin by Walden Pond. I could feel your presence there as I do here. You must still entertain a lot of company these days. I see a note on your grave and that some people have built tiny little cabins with twigs. I see someone left coins in a language I don't recognize. Russian maybe. I see someone else left a tiny piece of metal with perhaps Chinese characters on one side and the English word "balance" on the other. A group of German students just came. I see that note is from a pair of people from Galicia, Spain, and they left their names for you. I'm not sure if you read Spanish but Irisarri and Maria left you the note. It says "All of us who love nature are in debt to you, father of conservation and grandfather of ecology."

Even 147 years after your death, you continue to touch the minds and hearts of people around the world. You have clearly achieved what every writer, and would-be writers like myself who pale in comparison, dreams of -- eternal life. One of my darkest fears, apart from never publishing more than I have now, is that all of my words -- my magazine articles, news reports, newspaper columns, blogs and these journal pages will also disappear with me when I move on from this world.

This moment of self pity aside, I do want to thank you again for what you've done for me. I'm wearing your face on my shirt right now and everybody is asking me where I got it and what my connection is to you, H.D. (I hope you don't mind I have long called you that.) I told a woman who is on the board of The Thoreau Society I met this morning that you have guided me through much of my life. I guess you heard that but I wanted to tell you again. Your words expanded my mind at a tender age and made me think the world offered me much greater potential for living greatly than I might have otherwise believed. You at different times helped build my internal compass and at others helped me stay true to it.

One of my worst fears in college -- one that I rebelled against -- was that I would graduate and go work a normal job to the day I die without ever having truly embraced life. Thanks in part to you, I ventured to Alaska and to Spain and had all kinds of adventures -- not only in travel but in the personal and professional facets of my life. For the most part, I have made mighty good use of the time I've had on this planet. I've certainly sucked a lot of marrow out of it. I've always made consistent efforts to give back to the world, too, again following distantly in your footsteps.

I credit your hand as among the most influential, the most responsible, for so many of the best decisions I've made in my life. I am truly grateful beyond what I have the words to express.

You will live in my heart forever, and I hope that you continue to bless me with your guidance.

Sincerely,

Christopher D. Lancette

Standing in awe -- and uncertainty -- in revolutionary Boston

BOSTON -- Studying the history of the American Revolution sometimes feels more like mud wrestling than an intellectual pursuit. Even after all the years, libraries, documents and road trips, I just can't quite get my arms around it and pin it down. I don't know why I'm surprised that my life-long dream of coming to Bean town is proving to be yet another couple of rounds in the pit.

My day started with awe.

I hit The Freedom Trail this morning, notebook and cameras in hand -- my mind spinning in anticipation of seeing sights I have known only as words and photographs for so long. "Captain John Hodgkins" led me along a guided tour that left me hanging on his every word. Every time he pointed and drew a deep breath, I bounded in that direction. Dressed in colonial attire of a gentleman, he told us about the history of the founding of this city and then bellowed out some of the highlights of the revolution that began here.

I bowed my head at the Granary Burying Ground and paid respects to James Otis, one of the not-as-well-remembered heroes of what became the freedom movement. He was the lawyer who argued against the writs of assistance for four hours, imploring that the British Crown not be allowed to enter anyone's house with a flimsy document and confiscate anything they find. His effort fell on deaf ears, but John Adams said he thought the Revolution started on that day. I gave just as much reverence to the likes of Paul Revere and to what modern history still records as victims of the Boston Massacre.

That's where it gets muddy.

The truth is that the Americans antagonized the British troops that fateful day. In the freezing cold winter, they hurled oyster shells and everything else they could find at the soldiers. Tension was still running high over the shooting of a boy by a lobster back a week earlier. We didn't have time to get into this kind of detail on the tour but I've read enough accounts of the events of that event to understand how the soldiers could have lost their composure. That didn't make firing on the colonists right but I have to at least acknowledge their mobbish behavior.

I'm still not sure what to make of everything that unfolded that day (March 5, 1770), but I am adamant that the site of those deaths should be better heralded than it is now. The spot where five people died and that ignited revolutionary fervor is now marked but by street bricks on a tiny traffic island outside the Old State House. People step all over it crossing the street and many clueless passersby probably don't even know what the spot is. I didn't even see a sign. I suspect that the everyday tourist in the group would've passed right over it without knowing what it was were it not for our captain.

I just don't quite get how a place that should be much more hallowed ground became something that people simply stomp all over. I realize that in 2009 it would be nearly impossible to fix the problem -- there's no room to re-route the roads.

Still. Couldn't something have been done earlier?

I returned to awe on my next few stops.

At Faneuil Hall, I sat there quietly imagining all the debates and community meetings that took place more than two centuries ago. Then I hopped on the T and took the train out to Quincy to visit the homes of my very favorite Founding Father, Mr. Adams. He is to me the most accessible of the bunch. The most human. The most open and expressive with his emotions and his thoughts. I can relate to his joy's and wallow in his pains. I can feel his ego bruisings. I can identify with his shortcomings: He hid them not.

I toured his birth home, walked next door to the home he later occupied with Abigail, the great love of his life. Every man and woman should be so lucky as to have a bond like what they shared.

I moved on to the home, "Peace field" where John and Abigail spent the rest of their lives. Its' where they listened in horror as surgeons cut into their daughter's breasts with a saw trying to remove a tumor. It's where John wrote and read so much of famous correspondence with Thomas Jefferson, a man with whom his relationship rode a roller coaster over their decades of friendship and service to this nation. Some of the words they exchanged in their final years are the most touching to me and I've now stood in each of the very rooms where they read and wrote the other -- and, of course, where both died within hours of each other on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

I did not realize John Adams died in his study. The National Park Service tour guide explained that once his wife died, the old president could bear no more nights in their bedroom.

I thought I was going to end Monday's history exploration in the high note of the good company of John and Abigail. Both of them are heroes of mine, by the way, and I have spent an extraordinary amount of time in their graces. I've held original letters he wrote from France and I've even touched an alleged lock of her hair. (History groupies find access to these kinds of experiences.)

A ride back to Boston led me to a mudslide.

I entered the Boston Public Library at Copley Square and camped out in the beautiful reading room with a stack of books on the Revolution after marveling at the architecture of the building. The most compelling read was "Black Courage 1775-1783: Documentation of Black Participation in the Revolutionary War," by Robert Ewell Greene in 1984.

At the risk of sounding like the kind of politically correct blowhard I disdain, it is absolutely a self-evident truth that the contribution of African-Americans to the American Revolution have been largely overlooked by popular history. I've intended to do more with this idea but I have so many different Revolutionary research projects going I can't seem to finish one of them. The questions the author poses and begins to answer, though, are worth discussing.

Greene stated that the two essential questions that face Americans of color are what the Revolution has to do with them, and why black people would fight for a nation that held them in slavery. He wrote that the answers can only be obtained by first gaining a better understanding of the full facts surrounding black participation in the war.

As the sun set and the sky outside the giant windows in the library went dark, I delighted in Greene's clear, direct writing. No high-brow academic stuff here.

In short, he wrote that black men suffered just like their white counterparts in the war. Robert Green took a musket ball in the face. Thomas Lively lost his right eye in a battle and lost his leg in another. Caesar Skelton got stabbed in the back. An estimated 5,000 black men and women gave themselves to the cause of liberty -- their nation's and their own in hopes a victorious country would make good on its promise of freedom to those who served in Washington's army.

Why is this important to us today? I see it, as I believe Greene does, as a matter of simple fairness. A matter of telling a complete and unvarnished story about the full participation in the war that gave us this country. I've thought all day about what metaphor I might use to make this point. My first thought was naturally to compare telling an incomplete story to the idea of describing a beautiful woman but leaving out key details like the color of her eyes or the shape of her cheekbones. That doesn't do it justice, though.

As I sat here getting some directions from google for tomorrow's itinerary, I realized that failing to include the participation of African-Americans in the Revolutionary War would be like leaving out countless key turns when you're giving someone directions to an important destination. The poor sucker might not ever get there, or know how exactly he made it if he did manage to blindly stumble across it.

Time for me to go wash the mud off my hands. My wake up call is but hours away and there's much to explore tomorrow.