Walden Pond

In the summer of 1845, Henry David Thoreau, then in his late twenties, moved into a small cabin he had built himself on the north shore of Walden Pond, on land owned by his friend and fellow writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. He wanted, as he later put it, to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and to see what he could learn by stripping his existence down to its basics. He grew beans, watched the pond and its creatures through the seasons, read, wrote, and thought.

He stayed for two years, two months, and two days, and out of the experience came Walden, published in 1854, a book that is part nature writing, part social criticism, and part spiritual reflection. Its call to simplify, to value time and nature over money and possessions, and to question the way most people live has echoed through American culture for more than a century and a half, influencing everyone from conservationists to figures of nonviolent protest.

Thoreau's original cabin is long gone, but its site on the wooded slope above the water is marked, and a stone cairn has grown there over the years as visitors add rocks in tribute, a tradition begun long ago. Nearby stands a full-size replica of the tiny cabin, showing just how spare his quarters were, a single room with a bed, a desk, a stove, and little else. Standing on the spot, looking down through the trees to the pond, it is easy to feel the pull of the place he chose.

The pond is now a state reservation and remains beloved by the people of the region, who come to swim off its beaches in summer, walk the path that rings the entire shore, and simply sit by the water. Because it is a deep kettle pond fed from below, the water stays remarkably clear and cold, and the reservation works to keep it that way, which is why some restrictions apply to protect it from erosion and pollution.

Walden Pond sits on the edge of Concord, a town extraordinarily rich in American history. It was here, at the North Bridge in 1775, that colonial militia first stood and fired on British regulars, the shot heard round the world that helped begin the Revolutionary War, now commemorated at Minute Man National Historical Park.

In the nineteenth century, Concord became a center of American literature and thought, home at various times to Thoreau, Emerson, the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Louisa May Alcott, who wrote Little Women in the town. Many of their houses can still be visited, and a number of these writers lie buried on Authors' Ridge in the town cemetery. Few small towns have contributed so much to both the nation's founding and its imagination.

Summer is when the pond is busiest and best for swimming, the water cool and clear under the sun, and the beaches lively; parking fills early on hot days, so coming in the morning is wise. It is the season most visitors picture, and it captures the pond much as Thoreau enjoyed it in the warm months.

Autumn draws walkers to the shore path when the surrounding woods turn gold and red and reflect in the still water, arguably the loveliest time to circle the pond. Winter transforms it into a quiet, sometimes frozen scene of bare trees and snow, and Thoreau himself famously wrote about the pond's ice. Spring greens the woods again and stirs the returning birds. In every season the walk around the shore is a fine, contemplative outing.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.