Author Archives: Sandy Stott

By Corinne H. Smith

Once the leaves disappear at this time of year, a specific Thoreau quote creeps my mind: “The universe is wider than our views of it.”

You can find this sentence in the first paragraph of the concluding chapter of “Walden.” It starts a series of ruminations debating the act of staying in one place versus the choice to travel. A journey could lead you around the world, where you could even get a chance “to count the cats in Zanzibar.”

Three paragraphs after referring to the “universe,” Henry writes: “I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there.” That’s when the reader says to herself, “Naturally, he needed to leave. He had other things to see and do.” This is the original context of the “universe” quote. Thoreau is leading up to description of his departure from the Walden house. But I feel comfortable applying the saying to other situations.

Three years ago, I paraphrased it in a eulogy for fellow Thoreauvian Edmund Schofield. Ed had a variety of interests and a multitude of friends who were attached to each one of those endeavors. Most of the people had never met before. Most of their lines had never intersected. Ed had been their sole common thread. During the memorial service, we were surprised and gratified – even overcome with joy – to hear fifteen individuals share their memories and their own personal interactions with our mutual friend. They were all different. Ed’s universe had truly been wider than our views of it.

Each fall, the trees begin to bare themselves. Day by day, they unveil views that we either didn’t have before, or ones that we’ve forgotten. All summer long we had bold bright greenery in front of us. Now that it is receding, we can see through the line of shrubbery. We can see the outlines of houses on the other side. We can see fences and walls again. Nature had softened the scene for a few months. These days it drops away to uncover the background, the foundation that was always present.

Suddenly animal homes are also revealed. A robin’s nest is wedged among forked branches of the crab apple in the front yard. The birds are gone, leaving a perfectly smooth cup where the eggs were laid and the fledglings grew. A messy nest for squirrels soars from the top of a red oak. Its residents are still there, warm and dry, and perhaps also confident that they’ve stored enough food to survive the winter. Paper wasps have evidently been living in a maple tree at the edge of the North Bridge in Concord. How many hundreds of visitors walked beneath the nest this summer, unaware? How many redcoats and colonials took aim against one another here (as a matter of historical interpretation, of course) as the resident wasps flew above them to pollinate local gardens and to eat other insects?

Wasp nest in a maple near the North Bridge

This “universe” quote is a metaphor for Life, isn’t it? It’s all about perspective. We have only our own impressions to guide us. We operate solely upon the bits of information that we have available. Rarely do these pieces form an entire story. We have to have patience or perseverance to learn the rest. That’s just the way it is.

Gosh, Henry. It turns out that we don’t have to go anywhere to see something different, or to get the wider view of the universe. We can stand right here and let the seasons change around us. The cats of Zanzibar can remain uncounted. But you knew this all along.

It’s here, this month whose interior symbol might be a single lamp beside a deep-cushioned chair. It is dusk. A mug of tea steams on a table beside the chair; an unread book you have been saving for the whole fall lies there slimly. You are there, or long to be.

But beyond the window, the land emerges, shows off its bones, eyes too now the open sky. And from that sky comes light, abbreviated, yes, but in its slanting brevity, in its course through the now bare trees, in its necessity, the November light is…Um, how to avoid? It is Concord, after all. Go ahead. Um, okay…transcendent.

Now, you’ve done it. The ghost of Henry Thoreau can’t be far away. Here, as if summoned, he is: “There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate, — not a grain more…The Scarlet Oak must, in a sense, be in your eye when you go forth.” (Autumnal Tints)

It is another scarlet tree “in [my] eye” before I emerge each morning and hope for the sun near the roofline of south school. One of the two guardian maples in the West Parking Lot has been putting on a show; its companion is racing redly to catch up. When the light and the day are gray, the whole tree vibrates against this dullness; in the sun it is second fire. When I walk home in the dusk, the maple is still lit.

Only in November.

One of my colleagues has a watch that reads October 32nd today. The thought of overextending October should be enough to tighten your embrace of November. It is the wonder-month for light.

Welcome to it.

By Corinne H. Smith

It’s a misty and golden autumn morning. I use the windshield wipers once or twice as I set out to drive to Concord. At least there’s no icy film on the glass. And the grass in the yards is glistening with just dew, not white frost. A freeze is fast approaching, though. You can feel it in the air.

I head to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery first. I haven’t checked in with the 19th-century folks in a while. At this hour, even on a Saturday, I may have the place to myself. I can stand in front of the little marker that says HENRY as long as I want to. I can bring him up to date with whatever I feel like telling him, without being interrupted. Tomorrow I’ll be back here in tour guide mode, with a large group of people surrounding me. I won’t have the opportunity then to catch a private moment.

I pick up a pinecone on my walk up the hill. You can’t visit Henry Thoreau empty-handed and without bringing him a present from Nature. When I reach the Thoreau family plot, I’m shocked to see only a single nut (either butternut or beech) lying in front of his marker. The gravesites have been cleaned. I look around. No one else – not the Hawthornes, Louisa May Alcott, or even the great Mr. Emerson himself – has any gifts lying on or near his/her stone. I place the pinecone in front of HENRY and look around for something else. I find a sprig of tiny acorns that the squirrels and chipmunks have missed. I add it to the patch of raw earth in front of the granite. Then I step back to breathe and absorb the atmosphere.

This glacial ridge is among the most peaceful places in Concord. On this October day, the oaks and maples and pines decorate the edges of the scene with yellows and reds and greens. Squirrels and chipmunks busy themselves in the leaf litter. One squirrel is perched on a nearby branch, barking a warning to his colleagues. “I’m not a threat,” I tell him. “I’m not after you or your food supply.” Somehow, he doesn’t believe me. A gathering of Canada geese honk from behind me, down in the wetland called Cat Pond. A pair of crows – or are they ravens? – silently take off from one tall tree and land at the top of another, across the way. I shiver with a fleeting thought of Edgar Allan Poe. But he’s not here. He’s down in Baltimore.

By the time Kristi Martin took this photo on the following Tuesday, many more pine cones had found their way to HENRY.

When I look at the HENRY stone again, my eyes are drawn to its top right-hand corner. The rock-face is a little whiter here, sustaining more wear than from just the action of mere age and weather alone. Someone felt the need to take home more than just a photo. Someone wanted a piece of Henry David Thoreau; and since this wasn’t possible, he/she carved off a slice of his headstone instead. Perhaps the thief (or thieves) were unaware that this isn’t the original 1862 stone. Heck, it may not even be the first replacement for the original stone.

Most of the members of the Thoreau family were first interred down the hill in the New Burying Ground. Today, this plot is as close as you can get to the intersection of Bedford Road and Monument Street and still be on cemetery land. The Dunbars lie there still, beside an empty space. The Thoreaus were moved up to Author’s Ridge in the 1870s. The current large family THOREAU stone was put into place in 1890, when it was donated by Benjamin B. Thatcher of Bangor, Maine. His mother was Henry Thoreau’s cousin, Rebecca Billings Thatcher.

As for the individual name markers, I’m not sure of their vintage.  However, the story goes that someone visited this ridge one day and was shocked to find that the HENRY stone was missing. (While I can’t locate documentation to confirm the details at the moment, this probably happened during the late 1960s or early 1970s. The jail site marker was stolen at least twice in the same time period.)
Presumably, the stone had been stolen. Arrangements were quickly made to get a replacement installed with as little fanfare as possible. As a result, the one we see today has been standing there only for a handful of decades. A friend now tells me that the HENRY stone may not even sit in the right place within the family plot. Egad! How can anything so simple become so complex?

In the end, this marker – like the ones at Walden Pond, and elsewhere – is merely a symbol for something much larger. We look at it, and we think. We leave little mementos behind in silent tribute. We feel satisfaction when we do this.

I leave Sleepy Hollow believing that there’s enough of Henry David Thoreau’s legacy for every one of us to share. We need not be greedy. We need not take slices of stone to make an intimate connection. But if you ever see an old granite HENRY stone offered at a yard sale, please let me know.