Blogger: Wendy Lawton
I’m just finishing up my summer vacation. Or I should say, staycation. My daughter and grandson came to visit for two weeks and we decided to stay put and do as many local travels as we could fit in. So after trips to the coast, to Angel Island and Alcatraz, excursions into the Mother Lode, ghost towns and, of course, outlet malls and the local salon for our annual mother/daughter mani/pedi treat, we left for the airport to return Rebecca and Alex to the East Coast at two o’clock this morning. (That’s the time we leave home for a six o’clock flight. š )
We never embark on a vacation without remembering THE vacation. I cannot believe it was twenty-three years ago. I wrote about it a while ago but I figured today was the perfect day to dredge up that blog to re-share it. I can’t believe how young our children were. Our eldest daughter is now a college instructor and regularly introduces students to the literary world. We only had two children at the time. Our third and youngest child came to us when she was ten years old so she missed this trip.
Sometimes our literary pilgrimages will offer new insight into the milieu of the writer. Such was the case with our most extensive literary jaunt.Ā The year was 1995 and we decided to visit the birthplace of the New England Transcendentalists. Our oldest daughter had just graduated from high school and was already a confirmed bluestocking. Our poor son would have rather been fishing, parasailing or hurling himself down a mountainside but he had learned to put up with us. And our youngest daughter didnāt join our family until she was ten, so she missed this one. But for the four of us who went, weād all say that it was the trip of a lifetime.
We began our trip by staying in Copley Plaza in Boston where we haunted the museums with side trips to see the famous points of history. Little did I know then that I would write a book, Freedomās Pen, which took place on those very streets. We even saw the grave of Mary Goose, widely thought to be the famed Mother Goose.
We went from Boston to Concord where we stayed in a bed & breakfast that was said to have been Nathaniel Hawthorneās springhouse at one time. It was directly across the road from the Alcottās Orchard House where Louisa May Alcottās father Bronson used to sit on a bench under a tree and hold court with the literati of Concord, including Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Both of them just lived down the road. The philosophy of the New England transcendentalists grew out of these meetings.
Our travels took us to Walden Pond on a drizzly morning and were able to walk the whole way around barely seeing another humanāa miracle if you know the modern Walden Pond. We walked up to Sleepy Hollow cemetery and visited the gravesites of all these famous writers. I found the grave of Margaret Sidney as well. She wrote The Five Little Peppersāanother book from childhood I loved. We went to the Old North Bridge where the āshot heard round the worldā was fired. Nearby stood The Old Manse, which had been home to Ralph Waldo Emerson and then the newlywed Nathaniel Hawthorneās. The herb garden there at the Old Manse had been planted by Henry David Thoreau as a wedding gift for the Hawthornes.
As we walked the town and began to understand the interwoven lives of these beloved writers I understood in a very tangible way the importance of a writerās community. I came home more determined than ever to stay connected to my fellow writersāthatās where creativity blossoms.
After we left Concord, we stayed for a time at Williamstown so we could take in the theater and attend a Tanglewood concert (with Yo Yo Ma, no less). We took many a day tripāto the studios of Daniel Chester French and Norman Rockwell. And another literary side trip to the Stockbridge Library where I got to go down into the basement and actually hold Hitty in my hand (from the book, Hitty her First Hundred Years by Rachel Fields). That was before they began thinking of archival protection for the adventurous Hitty. Now Iām sure she is hermetically sealed or something.
Our last leg of our travels was out to Amherst where we stayed in a guesthouse on campus just a few doors from Emily Dickinsonās house. At twilight that last night we walked over to her house and sat on the porch to watch the sunset.
It was a trip we will never forget and more than anything we came away with the understanding of the interconnectedness of the community of writers/artists. And to think, this was just one geographical location and one era.
So hereās my question for you: Where would you take your dream literary travels?
