Walking Towards Walden: A Pilgrimage in Search of Place [Paperback]

John H. Mitchell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 11, 1997

If there is such a thing as an Americana pilgrimage, it must be to Concord. One brilliant Columbus Day, John Mitchell made just such a pilgrimage, from an ancient burial site, along the Great Road followed during the Revolution by the minutemen, fifteen miles to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and the home not only of Thoreau but of Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and Emerson. Along the way of this delightful narrative, natural and human history converge and we begin to understand what is meant by a sense of place and why this landscape is our countrys sacred site.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Observing that pilgrimage to spiritual centers is not Anglo-Saxon Protestant America's thing, Mitchell (Ceremonial Time) and his companions Kata Grant, a specialist in Native American basketry, and Barkley Mason, a birdwatcher and seeker, set off from their Massachusetts homes on Columbus Day 1994 on what they consider a sacred journey to Concord, ending in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and the Alcotts are buried. Their 15-mile walk to this perceived "centering place" took them along the overgrown paths of the Minutemen of 1775; as Mitchell reminds us, the point of a pilgrimage is hardship, endurance, cleansing. The friends exchange tedious talk of Odysseus, the Holy Grail, Native American folklore, Columbus "the oppressor," Ponce de Leon (whose Fountain of Youth the trio sought on an earlier expedition). Although there's a smugness about these folks in their certainty that Buddha and Krishna share their sensibility, Mitchell shows his acuity in his ruminations on "place," which he ultimately discerns is to be found in the exoticism of the familiar. Illustrations.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Mitchell, naturalist and author of Living at the End of Time (LJ 6/1/90), decided to hike to the grave of Thoreau from Concord, Massachusetts, burial site of a member of the party of Sir Henry Sinclair, a 16th-century Scottish explorer, in an attempt to learn more about that famous landscape. Avoiding most roads and accompanied by two eccentric friends on the 15-mile walk, the author investigates a wide variety of related topics, including natural history of the area, mythology, and related literature. One of the most interesting aspects of this pilgrimage is the variety of personal histories related by local residents encountered on the trek. Recommended for local and larger natural history collections.
Tim Markus, Evergreen State Coll. Lib., Olympia, Wash.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (March 11, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201154870
• ISBN-13: 978-0201154870
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,195,921 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Hanson Mitchell's earlier work is focused on a square mile tract of land known as Scratch Flat, located about thirty-five miles north-west of Boston. Mitchell has used this anomalous landscape of rolling hills, farms, forests and encroaching suburbs to explore his continuing interest in natural and human history and the whole question of place in human cultures,both native and European. Best known of this series of books is the first, Ceremonial Time:Fifteen Thousand Years on One Square Mile.

Later books explore the relationship between culture, nature, and place. These works deal with such disparate subjects as the relationship between Italian gardens and the American wilderness and the role of the sun in various cultures, outlined in the book Following the Sun, a 1500 mile bicycle journey he made from Cadiz in Spain, north to the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. His latest book, The Paradise of all These Parts, is a natural history of the little peninsula that became the city of Boston.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mitchell's Multi-layered Cultural History, March 9, 2002

By 

Robert G. Gard III (Melrose, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Walking Towards Walden: A Pilgrimage in Search of Place (Paperback)

These 300 pages describe both a physical journey, lasting but a day, overlaid with historical, architectural, artistic, anthropological, and literary musings of a richly cultivated mind. He writes, for example, upon viewing a stark landscape, "...I made the connection...This hollow...looks very much like the fourteenth-century Tuscan forest as envisioned by nineteenth-century French illustrator Gustave Dore."

Making connections is Mitchell's forte. The narrative of a tramp through woods and sloughs brings to Mitchell's fertile imagination scenes enacted in the places they pass. He seamlessly inter-weaves the fascinating story of King Philip's War, described as "one of the first anti-imperialist efforts ... the first American revolution" alongside the war between the colonists and British regulars, "essentially a civil war."

Rather than re-hash Thoreau's meditations in "Walden," Mitchell shares his own stream-of-consciousness, touching on "The Epic of Gilgamesh" and "The Wizard of Oz," "The Inferno" and some of Melville's "chief harpooners." Additionally, he offers an in-depth account of the way that nineteenth-century landscape painters changed the view of society toward their environment, suggesting that "It is doubtful that the preservation of a wilderness park would even have been considered if the painters hadn't been there first." Indeed, his descriptions are painterly, but he also succeeds in carefully bringing his companions and those they meet on the way to believable life.

The book is divided into 18 chapters, fifteen of them given names of places traversed in each of the miles walked. These names, such as "Nonset Brook" and "Nagog" are less likely to register with the reader than the connections these places evoke in the mind of the author. Who can recall, for instance, that the etymology of "Key West" is to be found in "Mile 10: Thoreau Country?" Hopefully, an index in a later edition will make it easier for the reader to re-discover favorite passages.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A thoroughly irritating book, December 12, 2002

By 

John Anderson (Bar Harbor, ME USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Walking Towards Walden: A Pilgrimage in Search of Place (Paperback)

Let me start by saying that I am a big fan of Mitchell, and I really enjoyed CERMONIAL TIME. This lead me to look forward to the arrival of WALKING... and at one level I was not disappointed. AS in all his work Mitchell is adept at weaving together diverse strands of history, culture, and place and to get us thinking about the landscape in new ways. His taste in friends (or at least his way of introducing us to his friends) however seems somewhat flawed. While his other books are more solitary ruminations on ideas and areas, in WALKING he brings along two annoying Yuppies, who would serve as comic relief if any was needed. One is an incredibly PC Indian Wannabe, the other is the sort of Birder that gets some of us reaching for the shotgun, between them they serve only to distract the reader from what would otherwise be a pleasant cross-country ramble through a landscape made all the more interesting by Mitchell's knowledge of both recent history and geological "deep time". Overall Mitchell is at his best when he talks about the dead or the non-human, he can be downright cruel in his descriptions of the living people that he encounters as he approaches Concord. For all that I can sympathize with Mitchell's obvious concern for the rampant development that he must deal with I am not sure that this sort of meaness towards folks who may well be Fellow Travellers (in several senses of the word) does the story much good. In spite of my criticism this is probably a stroll worth taking though you may want to stuff two of your companions into a cedar swamp!

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A quick read that will change your perception of our time, July 9, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Walking Towards Walden: A Pilgrimage in Search of Place (Paperback)

Mr Mitchell combines a critical analysis of our history, nature and our American culture in a very insightful and entertaining way. This book is a quick read and well worth the full cover price.