Anniversary Saga - To Walk in the Footsteps of History

Did you know that Ralph Waldo Emerson hated the name of Ralph?  In fact, he disliked it so much that he named his son Waldo.  Well, that’s just one of the interesting facts that we learned when we toured his house today in Concord.  That and he had an Aeolian harp that he hung in a tree while he was outside working, which acted as a 19^th century Pandora when the wind would blow over the strings.

Then we went across the street to the Concord Museum and saw a limited-time special Daniel Chester French exhibit.  DCF was a sculptor that RWE helped get started.  His first known commission was for the Minute Man memorial statue in Concord to commemorate the start of the American Revolution.  He then went on to do such well-known things as the John Harvard statue in the Harvard University courtyard and the Abraham Lincoln memorial statue in Washington, D.C.

We finished up the day with another obvious Halloween endeavor.  You can’t come to Concord, MA in October and not go to Sleepy Hollow.  Okay, maybe not the exact same Sleepy Hollow from the book, but still pretty cool.  The Sleepy Hollow Cemetery is the final resting place of some of America’s best-known authors – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Louisa May Alcott.  As well as the gravesite of Daniel Chester French.  It’s also one of the most beautiful cemeteries I’ve ever seen.

The cemetery is picturesque, headstones set in random, asymmetrical groupings, protruding like gray teeth from the rolling hills and nestled between a variety of old, thick trees.  The weather was perfect for a trip to Sleepy Hollow.  Gray, overcast, and gloomy.  The air was cool, and rain was barely being held in check.  The dark shadows under the numerous trees, contrasting with the vibrant colors of the leaf-covered and reddish-brown pine-needled floor, set an ideal atmosphere to imagine a headless horseman riding through the headstones.  But the best we got was a spooky duck, quack-laughing from the pond nearby.

Tired, sore, and slightly wet (the drizzle finally caught up with us), we stopped at Starbucks and treated ourselves to a hot chocolate.  It was nice to actually take time to relax, instead of running, running, running.