My New England "LiteraTOUR"

Well, we did it! Husband Steve and I took our little Tab trailer, bikes, and two-seater kayak across the country and found the roots of some of my favorite American authors I've been reading lately in my Lifetime Reading Plan. We went almost 7,000 miles in 3 weeks. The leaves were just changing and the weather was balmy (although a bit unseasonably warm and humid at times. Luckily we have AC in the Tab).

When we got home one of my first thoughts was of my Little Free Library and how to share my  experiences. So I decided to use my book bin to highlight treasures from my New England "litera-tour." (Don't I have a nice husband to take me on wild-goose chases while listening to me read aloud and rave on? He did this for me when we spent some time in England, too, which I should write about later.)

This was a long-dreamed-about trip, but actually came to be on the spur of the moment. We decided to do it only two days before we left. This was because we had to get to the Value Voters Summit in Washington D. C. in five days. Our daughter and her family live near there and we always fly and stay with her for this conference which we have attended every year since it started 11 years ago. At the last minute we decided to combine everything into one road trip.

Beyond getting to Maryland to our daughter's house our plans were not concrete. It was more like me saying, Hey, do you think we can go to Orchard House or Walden Pond? And my husband saying, Sure! It ended up being more than I ever dreamed.

The conference was very good (Matt Walsh had me at C.S. Lewis), we took in Shenendoah's gorgeous Skyline Drive one day with our family, and then said goodbye and headed north-ish. (We saw a lot on this trip, as in Niagara Falls, but for the purpose of this post I will highlight the author sites.) Pulling into the Minuteman campground near Concord, Massachusettes, hidden in a beautiful forest of tall trees, we unhooked the Tab and headed for perhaps the most author-dense pinprick in the nation.

First up, Orchard House, plain and brown, where Louisa May Alcott lived and where she based Little Women. We enjoyed a nice tour of the house which included a lot about U.S. history and Louisa's family and life. Little Women came to life. I must read it again keeping in mind how autobiographical it really is. We stayed a couple hours and then took to our bikes on the nearby Minuteman trail for several miles. Next, the Old Manse, across the street from Orchard House, so named by Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose book Mosses From an Old Manse I had read less than a year ago and so loved. This creaky 300-year-old house once belonged to Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose glorious writings I also read recently, who invited Hawthorne to stay. I was invited to play a few bars on the parlor grand piano and saw these great writers' rooms and views from their windows, even love-poem etchings on the window glass done by Hawthorne's wife with her diamond ring. I soaked in as much as I could of the times and souls and thoughts that had passed through that house. We didn't have time to tour Wayside House nearby, where Alcott, Hawthorne, and a little later, Margaret Sidney (who wrote The Five Little Peppers series) lived. But we weren't done with Concord yet.

September 19 dawned very muggy and wet, the very day we planned to visit Thoreau's Walden Pond. I had read Walden not long ago and found it spiritual and moral and uplifting, perhaps contrary to the purely granola way it is represented today. Ever since I read it I have tried, as Thoreau advised, to appreciate the sunrise/sunset as one thing that can be relied upon to help keep hold of one's sanity. I also use wonderful quotes from him on my Blue Hill Books bookmarks. "We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention." And "Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage."

Thoreau being in a state of mourning at the death of his brother, Emerson offered his land as a retreat. Thoreau decided to build a tiny cabin, write, and live off the land, which he did for two years. The original cabin is long gone, but a charming facsimile has been constructed, as per his detailed description in Walden. And rain or not, after we delightedly learned that the pond (part of the state park) is available for recreational use, we went to the pond (which is more like a lake) and launched the kayak. Even in the rain the verdant, isolated place felt blessedly serene. We had it practically all to ourselves except for a few intrepid swimmers. After rowing its circumference, I decided to

take a swim myself. The rain had abated, the air was warm, the water was only a bit cool, and I swam the half mile across with Steve rowing the kayak alongside. See what I mean about better than I ever dreamed? Can soaking up the atmosphere of the place get any better than swimming in quiet soft glassy cool Walden Pond?

Due to intermittent tour hours we missed seeing the inside of the stately white Emerson house, where he also lived, but walked around the charming gardens. Next was Concord Museum where we saw Thoreau's green desk and so many other interesting things that we were late checking out of our campground and had to pay a late fee!

On to Hartford, Connecticut. We had been to Hannibal, Missouri, Mark Twain's childhood home, years before, but since viewing Ken Burns's wonderful documentary, I really wanted to see the big fancy house Samuel Clemens built for himself and his beloved family when he finally settled down.

Set downtown on a bit of a hill, surrounded by towering leafy trees, what a dark house it is, a man's house I'd say, with dark walls, dark floors, dark furnishings, dark staircases, dark carved embellishments and, among some white marble sculptures, even dark works of art. They had the lighting set as if gas-lit as per the times, and I felt I was going a bit blind. Even the children's schoolroom was dark and full of dark furniture, toys, and books. The children's bedrooms were lighter and sunnier. (Sorry, no photos were allowed inside.)

Twain's third-floor man-cave fit him to a T, with its billiard table and masculine writing desk and accoutrements. His happiest family times and most productive writing took place in this house. But I felt its darkness was an omen of the sadness that was to come. He failed financially because of speculations in a printing machine, had to leave the house, worked hard to make back his fortune by lecturing around the world, and outlived his cherished wife and all but one of his four beloved children. The museum next door was the biggest, fanciest museum I've ever seen built for one man. Did you know that in his time he was the most famous American on earth? I have a goal to read everything he wrote. So far I've read and reread: Tom, Huck, Joan, Yankee, Prince, Pudd'nhead, and some stories. Innocents Abroad, here I come.

Next door was none other than Harriet Beecher Stowe's house. Here was the little woman who started the big war, as Lincoln put it, by writing Uncle Tom's Cabin. We were running out of time and did not take the house tour, but wandered the gardens a bit. At least we had visited the Harriet Tubman house just days before in Auburn, New York--what a great tour and lecture they have there.

My husband made a valiant effort to get us to Sunnyside House, the home of Washington Irving in Tarrytown, New York, but when we finally got there a scary woman in the back of a truck loading up garden refuse warned us off. It was closed on Wednesdays! I think I'll read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow again anyway. Somehow it fits.

So there's our New England Literatour.  I've stuffed my special book bin in my little library with books from these great authors. As soon as we got home I read a thin volume of Louisa May Alcott's short stories. What beautiful writing and how firm her foundation in goodness. Remember, what we read matters. Be careful what you feed your mind!

Books are the best of things, well used: abused, among the worst. Ralph Waldo Emerson.