Walking Towards Walden: A Pilgrimage in Search of Place

One brilliant day in October, John Mitchell and two friends began a fifteen-mile walk to the tomb of Henry David Thoreau. Starting from an ancient burial site where, according to legend, a Scottish Earl became lost on a quest for the Holy Grail, they bushwhack through the landscape where our literature and history began: the woods favored by the Transcendentalists and the Great Road followed by the minutemen as they marched to the Old North Bridge. On each mile of this quintessentially American pilgrimage the author and his friends explore not only the natural landscape before them but also certain timeless themes: they wonder at the force that drew pilgrims to certain sacred sites, the sense of place that brings artists to Tuscany or Provence, and that deep abiding allegiance to place that binds each of us, if we are lucky, to a particular beloved spot.