I don't know the first time I was there, but yes the last one. And the last one - for most recent, for more real- It was the most special, because it was the peak of a long and joyful digestion. There had been many nights walking through Concord without setting foot on it; many hours of contemplation from a lagoon that served both as a mirror and as a refreshment at dusk for that man of unscathed principles called Henry David Thoreau.
And finally, on a cold November night, I entered the road that leads from Boston. “That's Emerson's house.”, Carolina told me, who welcomed me into his house Concord. I was beginning to understand that the author who has scratched me the most; that has changed me the most, nurtured, unclothed, separated from the ground ("My house in the clouds is quiet", wrote) and dressed again he talked about things that I, now, he had before his eyes. What I had read with the pores was true.
There had been many nights walking through Concord without setting foot on it; many hours of contemplation from a lagoon
Sometimes you don't choose the places, but the places choose him. It was October, I already had all the reports from my previous trip lined up and it was time to get off my ass to write. And without knowing why, I ended up with a plane ticket to Boston - because in Concord, clear, there is no airport. End, I spent in this quiet town of Massachusetts about a week.
I have been wanting to write about this meeting for a long time., but perfectionism has held me back. Now, by impulse, as if he wrote with electrified fingers, I leave behind any hint of having to give an account of Thoreau and tell how I felt: whoever wants to assume his words should go to his diary, to his Walden, to his essays or even to his wild poems.
By impulse, as if he wrote with electrified fingers, I leave behind any hint of having to account for Thoreau
Recently, in a radio interview, the presenter asked me what Thoreau meant to me. He caught me on the wrong foot. Passions cannot be explained, they feel. I answered something corny, like improvising. I had taken my belongings, had crossed the pond, I was in my hero's land, And I still had to explain what it meant to me?
My first stop was the temple of Walden, a lagoon that I took a couple of turns around. It was the 11 November - I remember- and Carolina's father sang the temperature in the morning. That morning was cool, although not frozen. I had with me an anthology of Thoreau's diaries., and I went to 11 November - I don't remember the year- to see how he described that day from more than a century and a half ago. my mission, more than writing, more than attest to my steps along the sandy shore of Walden Pond, more than leaving a record of the trees undressing, in an autumn the color of fire, more than anything else, was to review what I had been reading for years, but with the feet.
I had with me an anthology of his diaries and I went to the lagoon to see how he described it more than a century and a half ago.
In Concord we remember that small list of writers who coincided in space and time, led by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Simply Waldo. One morning, snooping around in the house of the father of transcendentalism - a philosophy that draws on the German idealists and is committed to “an original relationship with the universe”, as he once said-, the caretaker of the house approached me, since it only opens on tourist dates. I told him what the hell I was doing in Concord and, clear, He opened the house to me and gave me a guided tour. The universe winked at me.
Home, blanca, big and flawless, It is next to the Concord museum, where I refused to buy a little wooden plaque that said “Walden” because they were not made in the town. In exchange, I spent a pleasant mid-morning focused on the rooms dedicated to these two men, one a disciple of the other and I a disciple of both.
The house in which he was born is further away, on the other side of town, and today it is the headquarters of an ecological products company
The house where Thoreau was born is further away, on the other side of town, and today it is the headquarters of an ecological products company and an association dedicated to this strange and subversive man, “ugly as a sin” (This is how a biographer described him) who never came down from his refuge in heaven. Having him as an example of many things has its positive consequences., but also negative: one realizes - or at least notices it- What is life apart from everything that confuses us and presses us?; but it also takes us by the hand to a dimension from which it is difficult to get off and touch the real world..
The place that best preserves his memory and his work is The Walden Woods Project, located on a small hill stuck in the middle of the forest and silence. There, the person in charge told me, scholars of philosophers regularly attend, doctoral students and researchers and passionate about a man whose laboratory moved between life and his diaries (more than 7.000 pages). In the library of that center there were dozens of volumes, and even his complete diaries in various versions - something impossible to find at reasonable prices., first editions and adjacent books of that philosophical movement that united some of the greatest minds in Massachusetts.
In Concord there is a street called Thoreau, a school called Thoreau and a myth called Thoreau
In Concord there is a street called Thoreau, a school called Thoreau and a myth called Thoreau. His grave is located in the writers' part of an immense cemetery.. There is a stone surrounded by pencils and pens, of no more than 30 centimeters high, that in winter covers the snow, and some carved letters draw “HENRY”. Nothing. His life was an example of simplicity attached to the rudimentary., to the basics, retail. To the space between the words where we rarely stop. “All good things are wild and free”.
