When a Vacation Becomes a Pilgrimage
- Susan Koehler
- 8 minutes ago
- 5 min read
This native Floridian, who’s lived most of her life on a school calendar, actually took an October vacation to New England. Flying into Boston, the environment was everything I had envisioned: Cooler temperatures! Autumn leaves! But I soon discovered that while the physical atmosphere was delightful, it was the literary landscape that would forever change me.
Just north of Boston, Salem’s immediate association is with the ominous history of 1692’s Witch Trials, spectral evidence, and horrid executions. There is a solemnly beautiful memorial, dedicated in 1992, where names of victims are carved in stone. One of those names is Margaret Scott. She was an elderly widow, among the last to be executed, whose descendants are buried in a family cemetery adjacent to my Florida home. That vague association reminded me that these historic atrocities were committed upon very real people.
But what do Witch Trials have to do with literature? Well, Salem happens to be the birthplace of Nathaniel Hawthorne. There’s even a statue of his likeness. The Custom House where Hawthorne once worked still stands, and it looks just like pictures used in articles and textbooks. The sight was familiar, but there’s something visceral about actually being there, looking up at the brick structure where the quiet clerk’s mind created characters like Hester Prine, Arthur Dimsdale, and Roger Chillingsworth.
The Scarlet Letter, like the bleak and haunting short story “Young Goodman Brown,” demonstrates the weight of ancestral guilt carried by Hawthorne. And that guilt is borne on behalf of the very real people who became victims of Salem’s Witch Trials. Hawthorne was plagued by the knowledge that his own great-great-grandfather, John Hathorne, was a magistrate who relentlessly pressured victims into confessions and sentenced fellow citizens to cruel deaths in 1692, all in a perceived effort to rid the colony of "the Devil's hand."
The sins of the fathers were visited upon generations, and through Nathaniel Hawthorne, generations hence have learned and will continue to learn the dangers of religious hypocrisy and arrogant judgment. But the energy of those earlier generations is not gone; it remains very present and alive in the cold winds that move across gray waters and send golden leaves tumbling up Derby Street and onto the steps of the Custom House.
West of Boston is Concord, a city that can justifiably boast about its award-winning Concord Museum, wealth of Revolutionary War history, and association with three-named literary luminaries like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, and Henry David Thoreau.
Awakening the world to their Transcendentalist philosophy, these authors prized authenticity and innovation over conformity and imitation. Each broken by their own personal tragedies, they broke from traditional roles and restraints, discovered the Divine in Nature, and stood in courageous opposition to the unjust structures of their time.
All in close proximity to the Concord Museum are Emerson’s home, The Old Manse that he once rented to Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House (the birthplace of Little Women), and Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where Hawthornes, Alcotts, Emersons, and Thoreaus are buried.
The day we roamed the hills of Sleepy Hollow, the sky was gray, water droplets dangled from the tips of leaves, and the wind was bitingly cold. The very ground seemed to vibrate with an energy that transcended the physical realm, and it was impossible to walk away unchanged.
No Transcendental trek would be complete without a trip to Walden Pond. It’s a recreation area now, where visitors swim and fish in the storied waters. But it’s also the place where Thoreau "went to the woods...to live deliberately" for two years, two months, and two days. It’s where he generated ideas and words that later became Walden and On the Duty of Civil Disobedience, works that shaped generations of minds, including John Muir, Mahatma Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.
There’s something sacred about standing where Thoreau once stood, feeling the breeze he once felt, hearing the rustle of leaves he once heard, and seeing, as he once saw, fragments of sunlight dance across blades of grass and ripples of water. In these woods, the present moment yields to a connection that transcends time, space, and spiritual planes.
Legendary Eagles drummer and vocalist Don Henley must have experienced that connection. In 1990, he founded the non-profit Walden Woods Project, an organization dedicated to protecting these historic woods and championing the concept of land conservation in the same way Thoreau once did in this very place. As a result, the experience, as well as the land, is preserved.
Before leaving Massachusetts, we made the westward drive to Amherst and visited the place I most longed to visit: the Emily Dickinson Museum. In addition to multiple volumes of her works, Aaron Copeland's Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson sheet music, and various references to her writings in my own work, I even have a daughter named for the poet. Needless to say, the Amherst visit was the crowning jewel of my journey.
The Homestead has been meticulously restored to the finest details. While the family’s original collection of books lives at universities, the library shelves have been replenished to display the same titles and authors, including the Bible, the bard, ancient works, and contemporary publications of the time, like Emerson and Alcott. There are even books filled with Emily Dickinson’s pressed flowers and scientific explorations. Standing among the literary morsels that fed the poet was a delicious delight.
However, climbing the wooden staircase and entering Emily’s room was the highlight of the tour. The very details sang to the senses: the intricately patterned wallpaper, the replica of her famous white dress, the portraits of Mary Ann Evans (AKA George Eliot) and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, her writing desk at the window... It was while standing in Emily Dickinson’s bedroom that I came to the realization that my journey was much more than a vacation; it was a pilgrimage.
I discovered long ago that seeing a picture of a painting is a far different experience than standing before the artist’s original work. The picture offers value for pleasure as well as study. However, the original work is alive: the very energy of creation pulses in the air around it. To occupy space in the same environment where great thinkers and writers once lived and created is an equally powerful experience.
For me, a vacation that began as a mild leaf-peeping adventure turned out to be a pilgrimage to the fertile literary landscape of some of America's greatest thinkers and writers. To breathe the air, stand among the trees, and walk in the rhythm of a world that was once theirs was life-altering. True to the goal of any pilgrimage, there was communion with an unseen consciousness, that like nature itself, sparks contemplation, gratitude, and hope.