The Subterranean Author's Club

R.I.P., H.D.T

Henry David Thoreau once quipped: "A man's interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town." This quote has absolutely nothing to do with today's post--in fact, I'm not even sure I know what it means--I just like to use "quipped" whenever I have the chance (It also appears I'm stuck in a literary theme after the previous Shakespeare post).

View from The Cheese Shop

Nevertheless, LSB and I recently spent a pleasant summer afternoon in Concord, MA, which is only a few miles from Boston and home and final resting place of Thoreau, as well as, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Louisa May Alcott. They're all buried on "Author's Ridge" in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery a short walk from the center of town, where we shared an enormous sandwich in front of The Cheese Shop.

The Alcott's School of Philosophy

For some reason that I am unable to explain, I've always been oddly fascinated by cemeteries--especially really old, spooky ones. I've wandered through the haunted Greyfriar's Cemetery in Edinburgh; passed time in the "cities of the dead" in New Orleans; unexpectedly happened across Yeat's grave, under a huge, dark tree laden with hundreds of crows, in a small, rural churchyard in County Sligo; paid my respects to Jim Morrison (and Oscar Wilde) in Pere Lachaise, and spent many summer evenings drinking wine, listening to friends play guitars, and watching the stars outside the wall of a tiny cemetery near a small French village in the Pyrenees mountains.

One of several cool cemeteries in Concord

And now, I can add Sleepy Hollow to the list. Upon reflection, I guess it is kind of creepy that I have a list at all--in fact, I didn't even realize that I had a list until I started on this post. At any rate, there is no shortage of dead pilgrims, patriots, authors, artists, poets, and statesmen in subterranean New England, so I've found the cemeteries in the Boston area particularly interesting.

In spite of the fact that many of America's most famous writers (the Transcendentalists, no less) are buried on a hill a few steps from one another in a town that played a significant role in the history of our country (Lexington is next door and you heard about the shot, right?), the cemetery was mostly deserted and we were left pretty much alone to spend a few quiet moments with Henry, Ralph, Nate, Louisa, and others.