Walking Towards Walden: A Pilgrimage in Search of Place

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, 15 miles to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and the home not only of Thoreau but of Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and Emerson. Along the way of this narrative, natural and human history converge and the reader begins to understand what is meant by a sense of place and why this landscape is America's sacred site.