Henry David Thoreau's Grave

		Henry David Thoreau's Grave
		No matter when I visit Thoreau's grave, there is always something new: some new votive offering of flowers, coins, pebbles, sticks, pencils, notes or other items.

The offerings signify the thoughts, hopes and wishes of the Thoreau admirers and soul-mates who make the pilgrimage here.

Henry David Thoreau's grave on Authors Ridge in Concord's Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is severely plain: just a marble headstone engraved "Henry."

Visitors leave lots of votive offerings to Thoreau...

But Thoreau looms large in the minds and spirits of thousands of readers, ecologists and plain folks the world over, and for them (or me) a visit to his grave is a special event, summer or winter.

That's one hard-working little piece of marble....

Among the votive offerings it's common to find pencils, because Thoreau and his father John Thoreau ran a company that developed and manufactured the best pencils in the USA at the time. Pencils supported Thoreau in his studies at Harvard, during his life, and in his literary efforts. More...

If you visit Concord, be sure also to visit Walden Pond, and the site of Thoreau's house, where he lived alone in the woods and gave us thoughts in books that framed the outlines of the modern study of ecology.

The graves of Bronson Alcott, Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson and his wife Lidian, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, his wife Sophia and daughter Una, are all nearby on Authors Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.