A Walk to Wachusett

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Henry David Thoreau

Central topics Henry David Thoreau Thoreau Society A Plea for Captain John Brown A Walk to Wachusett Civil Disobedience Slavery in Massachusetts Walden Related topics Abolitionism — Anarchism Anarchism in the United States Civil disobedience Concord, Massachusetts Conscientious objection Direct action — Ecology Environmentalism History of tax resistance Individualist anarchism John Brown — Lyceum movement Nonviolent resistance Ralph Waldo Emerson Simple living — Tax resistance Tax resisters — Transcendentalism The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail Walden Pond

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A Walk to Wachusett is an essay penned by Henry David Thoreau about a journey he took with companion, Richard Fuller, from Concord, Massachusetts to the summit of Mount Wachusett located in Princeton, Massachusetts. Their journey, by foot, began on July 19, 1842. Traveling through Acton, Stow, Bolton, Lancaster and Sterling, they arrived in West Sterling by sunset and lodged overnight at a local inn.

Reaching the summit the following day, they had traveled a distance of approximately 34 miles. Time on the summit was spent exploring, relaxing and pondering the landscape and its inhabitants. On the third day, they traveled to Harvard, Massachusetts leaving in the morning of the fourth day as "one bent his steps to the nearer village of Groton, the other took his separate and solitary way to the peaceful meadows of Concord ...."

First published in the January 1843 issue of The Boston Miscellany, this was perhaps the first of his writings on excursions taken over the years. Later trips, including a return to Wachusett in October of 1854 as well as trips to Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont are documented in his journals.

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• An online copy of the text is maintained by the The Walden Woods Project.