 |
|
|
|
|
As a new Concord resident over 20 years ago, I met a very pleasant local woman and her golden retriever, Sammy, while out taking a walk. She offered to take me on my first visit to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, a favorite haunt of theirs for morning jaunts. Of course, I took her up on her offer. We entered through a back trail, wandering through a newer section, past a little swampy pond, and then up a steep hill into the older portion of the cemetery at the base of Author's Ridge. Climbing the stairs, we ran the Golden Age of American Literature gauntlet. First, the gravesites of the Hawthornes and Thoreaus. Henry's grave was anointed with pine cones, bottle caps, and leaves. A few feet on, the burial sites of the Alcott family. Louisa's grave had little notes and a sweet-yet-sad little bouquet of wilting violets.
Suddenly, Sammy jumped the low chain fence, bounding into the center of the Emerson plot. Without hesitation, he trotted directly over to Waldo's grave marker. Lifting his leg, he took a lengthy and -- from the look on his face -- obviously satisfying moment to relieve himself on that piece of granite. Each member of the circle acted as if they had been slapped in the face, staggering back a step or two, wide-eyed with shock and horror. "That dog just peed on the Great Man Himself!," I could almost hear them thinking. My companion and I quietly slunk away, wishing we could disappear into the ground, not daring to call the dog after us. Years later, I related this story to an historian specializing in 19th century subjects. I asked him how he thought Waldo would have felt about this incident. He said Emerson would have taken it in stride, "but Henry Thoreau would have thought it was hilarious." Ever since this visit, this scene has been indelibly etched in my brain. I can't go to Sleepy Hollow without remembering the day that a call to Nature found its fullest meeting in Emerson's eternity.
Photos: Courtesy of Art Today.Nature, A Poem
 
 
|
One of the touchstones (no pun intended) of a visit to Concord is a stop at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery. Just off Monument Square, it's the resting place of many of Concord's 19th century notables -- not to mention the place where many of us living folks will have ourselves planted when our time comes. 
Yet a little further down the path we came to the fairly substantial Emerson family plot. Ringing that plot was a group of tourists recently disgorged from a bus waiting nearby. Silently and pensively, they stood in a circle 'round the many Emerson family headstones. Each seemed deeply immersed in deep, private thoughts. We joined their circle in silent reverence, our eyes joining the many others focused on the single, huge, pink granite marker of Ralph Waldo Emerson (in the foreground of the image at right).