Walking Towards Walden: A Pilgrimage in Search of Place - Hardcover

Mitchell, John Hanson

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0201406721 ISBN 13: 9780201406726

Publisher: Perseus Books, 1995

Synopsis

Describes the history, plants and animals, and meditations encountered along a fifteen mile walk through Concord, Mass.

About this title

About the Author:

John Hanson Mitchell is editor of Sanctuary magazine, published by the Massachusetts Audubon Society.

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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Perseus Books
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0201406721
• ISBN 13: 9780201406726
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 301