Sept 19, 1841
It is nice to have been to a place by the way a river went.
It is at that. You move along at a nice slow pace and, where Man has not intervened too much, you'll see some beautiful scenery.
One of Thoreau's books is A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, based on a trip that he took with his beloved brother John. (The book did not sell well initially, and HDT quipped "I now have a library of 1,000 books -- over 750 of which I wrote myself.") The Concord River is almost completely flat as it flows through the meadows at Concord -- it drops something like two feet over several miles. Thoreau built himself a boat -- the Musketaquid (the Indian name for the river), and used it extensively. He would collect driftwood in it, then haul it back to heat his house. When the river iced over, he would skate along it.
HDT eventually sold the Musketaquid to Nathaniel Hawthorne (whom you'll recognize as the author of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables as well as numerous short stories.) Although Hawthorne's opinion of Thoreau was decidedly mixed -- he recognized his genius but thought his behavior boorish -- he was is awe of HDT's skill as a boatsman.
One of Thoreau's books is A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, based on a trip that he took with his beloved brother John. (The book did not sell well initially, and HDT quipped "I now have a library of 1,000 books -- over 750 of which I wrote myself.") The Concord River is almost completely flat as it flows through the meadows at Concord -- it drops something like two feet over several miles. Thoreau built himself a boat -- the Musketaquid (the Indian name for the river), and used it extensively. He would collect driftwood in it, then haul it back to heat his house. When the river iced over, he would skate along it.
HDT eventually sold the Musketaquid to Nathaniel Hawthorne (whom you'll recognize as the author of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables as well as numerous short stories.) Although Hawthorne's opinion of Thoreau was decidedly mixed -- he recognized his genius but thought his behavior boorish -- he was is awe of HDT's skill as a boatsman.
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