Walden Pond is a historic pond in Concord, Massachusetts, in the United States. A good example of a kettle hole, it was formed by retreating glaciers 10,000–12,000 years ago.

Description

The Walden Pond Reservation is located south of Massachusetts Route 2 and (mostly) west of Massachusetts Route 126 in Concord, and Lincoln, Massachusetts. The Fitchburg Line of the MBTA Commuter Rail passes west of the pond; however, the nearest station is in Concord center, 1.4 miles northwest of the reservation.

The reservation is in size,

History

The writer, transcendentalist, and philosopher Henry David Thoreau lived on the northern shore of the pond for two years from the summer of 1845. Thoreau was inspired by former enslaved woman Zilpah White, who lived in a one-room house on the common land that bordered Walden Road and made a living spinning flax into linen fibers. White's ability to provide for herself at a time when few if any other Concord women lived alone was a singular accomplishment.

Thoreau's account of his experience at the pond was recorded in Walden; or, Life in the Woods, and made the pond famous. The land at that end was owned by Thoreau's friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who let Thoreau use it for his experiment. In 1995, The Trust for Public Land also assisted in the acquisition of a historic home, which would become the research center and library for the Thoreau Institute.

Thoreau contemplates the source of the pristine water body in the woods. He observes that it had no visible inlet or outlet, and considers the possibility of an unidentified spring at the bottom. Noting the kettle landform's ramparts and resilient shore, he concludes that a unique, natural geologic event formed the site, while recognizing local myths:

<blockquote>Some have been puzzled to tell how the shore became so regularly paved. My townsmen have all heard the tradition -- the oldest people tell me that they heard it in their youth -- that anciently the Indians were holding a pow-wow upon a hill here, which rose as high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep into the earth, and they used much profanity, as the story goes, though this vice is one of which the Indians were never guilty, and while they were thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one old squaw, named Walden, escaped, and from her the pond was named. It has been conjectured that when the hill shook these stones rolled down its side and became the present shore. It is very certain, at any rate, that once there was no pond here, and now there is one; and this Indian fable does not in any respect conflict with the account of that ancient settler whom I have mentioned, who remembers so well when he first came here with his divining-rod, saw a thin vapor rising from the sward, and the hazel pointed steadily downward, and he concluded to dig a well here. As for the stones, many still think that they are hardly to be accounted for by the action of the waves on these hills; but I observe that the surrounding hills are remarkably full of the same kind of stones, so that they have been obliged to pile them up in walls on both sides of the railroad cut nearest the pond; and, moreover, there are most stones where the shore is most abrupt; so that, unfortunately, it is no longer a mystery to me. I detect the paver. If the name was not derived from that of some English locality -- Saffron Walden, for instance -- one might suppose that it was called originally Walled-in Pond.</blockquote>

Romanticism, from "The Ponds" (Walden, 1854)

Also in "The Ponds," Thoreau describes incorporeal experiences around the water, both experiences related to him by others and his own. Thoreau, who was well read and a transcendentalist, and therefore presumably intimately familiar with Romanticism, relates the stories in a way that could be argued to interpret or reveal the pond as the locale of the Grail Legend in the Americas. In the following passage, Walden Pond's vanishing treasure chest echoes the protagonist's fleeting encounter with the grail in Wolfram von Eschenbach's German romance Parzival, and the pond's canoe is reminiscent of the boat in A Fairy Tale. (Goethe, who was a Classicist, not a Romanticist, positively viewed Parzival.) Thoreau wrote: The building uses no fossil fuel and has many other sustainable design features.

Influences

Walden Pond inspired the naming of the American film company Walden Media and is a frequent subject of professional and amateur photographers.

<gallery widths="160px" heights="160px">

File:Walden-winter.jpg|The pond in winter

File:Walden Pond, 2010.jpg|The pond in fall

File:Thoreau Quote Sign, Walden Pond.jpg|Site of Thoreau's cabin

File:Replica of Thoreau's cabin near Walden Pond and his statue.jpg|Replica of Thoreau's cabin

File:Richard Smith as Thoreau, at Thoreau replica cabin near Walden Pond.jpg|Costumed Thoreau interpreter Richard Smith at Thoreau replica cabin

File:Walden Pond 20230802 124624.jpg|Swimming beach

</gallery>

See also

  • List of National Historic Landmarks in Massachusetts
  • National Register of Historic Places listings in Concord, Massachusetts

References

Further reading

  • Anderson, Charles R. The Magic Circle of Walden (1968).
  • Hess, Scott. "Walden Pond as Thoreau’s Landscape of Genius." Nineteenth-Century Literature 74.2 (2019): 224–250. online
  • Lemire, Elise. 'Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts' (Penn Press, 2009; 2019 with new preface).
  • Maynard, W. Barksdale. Walden Pond: A History (Oxford UP, 2004)
  • Myerson, Joel, ed. Critical Essays on Thoreau’s Walden (1988).
  • Thorson, Robert M. Walden’s Shore: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Science (2015).
  • Thorson, Robert M. The Guide to Walden Pond: An Exploration of the History, Nature, Landscape, and Literature of One of America's Most Iconic Places (2018).
  • Walden Pond State Reservation Department of Conservation and Recreation
  • Walden Pond State Reservation Map Department of Conservation and Recreation
  • Friends of Walden Pond Walden Woods Project
  • The Thoreau Society
  • MassWildlife Pond Map and Info
  • "Writings of Emerson and Thoreau", broadcast from Walden Pond, from C-SPAN's American Writers: A Journey Through History