Legends Rest on Authors Ridge - Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, MA
“I went to the woods because I
wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow
of life, to put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to
die…..discover that I had not lived”
Henry David Thoreau
I finally made it to Sleepy Hollow
Cemetery. This is the cemetery where “Author’s Ridge” is located – Emerson,
Thoreau, Hawthorne and Alcott are buried here just to name a few. I had tried
to visit this place on several previous visits to Boston but it was either
raining or daylight had run out. On this day it was late afternoon on to dusk
and the autumn leaves were changing. Kind of surreal passing through the gate
and reading the old water streaked metal plaque on the granite pillars which
read “Sleepy Hollow Cemetery”. It was a picture perfect late October afternoon.
The air was cool but there was zero wind and it was very quiet. There was a
sign panel just inside the gate that had a cemetery map on it and a list of
prominent persons interred here – Their graves numbered on the map for ease of
location. My aim on this day was to visit “Author’s Ridge” where my personal
hero’s Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau are buried in their family
plots. Daniel French, the sculptor who created the sitting Abraham Lincoln in
the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. and the Minuteman statue at the North
Bridge in Concord– is also buried here. I imagine the grounds at the cemetery
are just as Thoreau would have wanted them to be – covered in pine and hardwood
forest – the turning leaves of several trees burning like torches in the pine
green. There was no under story where the pines were – long, thick, solid
columns reaching up through a thick carpet of many, many seasons of piled pine
needles giving the ground a rich brown almost auburn color. This pine needle
carpet was almost spongy when you walked on it. There were pine cones that had
white lichens growing on their bracts, lying about on top of the needles. Large
old brown maple and oak leaves were piled and scattered here and there by the
wind. Some of these leaves looked shiny and polished like a leather chair. The
roads and paths were covered with leaves – there was no creepy feeling as I
walked among the tombstones, just a profound reverence and peaceful feeling as
I marveled at the beauty of the North Eastern woods of Massachusetts. There
were many different types of headstones – the colonial looking tablets, Celtic
crosses and my favorite – pieces of stone or a boulder with the individuals
name etched into the stone. I reckon that is all I want when I die and the put
me under….just a nice chunk of rock…..maybe a piece of one of my favorite
mountains…and a name. At one point along a road in the cemetery I noticed a
curious and very beautiful colony of red ivy on the uphill side of the road. I
finally made it over to the base of “Author’s Ridge” as by this time I had
walked through the entire cemetery. A paved footpath with a metal hand rail
hung on granite pillars, wraps up the hill to the Thoreau family plot. I
noticed Henry David Thoreau’s name with his parents and siblings halfway down
the large stone monument in the center of the plot. I thought there would be a
great stone tablet – some large monument commemorating this great man who I
have come to admire so, but, instead after looking a little more closely, I
found a tiny stone marker – swimming in a sea of pine needles, cones, twigs and
maple leaves that simply read “Henry”. How foolish I was to expect a large
gaudy marker. This was his final act of simplicity – certainly just as he would
have wanted it – resting inauspiciously for eternity in the woods. A stone lay
in the pine needles close to Henry’s marker and someone wrote these words upon
it “As if you could kill time without injuring eternity”. Beyond Thoreau’s
grave across the path was the Hawthorne family plot. Nathaniel rests under an
un assuming weathered stone tablet that simply reads “Hawthorne”. Back across
the path a few steps farther along the way is the grave of Louisa May Alcott –
author of “Little Women”. It seems the custom here is to leave a pencil or a
note at the headstone of these literary giants as there were several pencils at
the base of each one. Next I had to find Emerson and if a few short steps, I
found the family plot. I searched the large tablet headstone and found many
Emerson’s but not Ralph Waldo. It was then that I noticed the great “Rock” and
again I told myself “I should have known”. It was interesting that the green
bronze plaque on the rock that marks his grave as well as the faces of his
wife’s and daughter’s tablets located on his left and right respectively, face
the opposite direction from all the other Emerson family tablets. In the late
setting sun of an October afternoon I could see why. The golden last rays of sunlight
burned through the changing leaves and washed the stones in rich golden light.
What a show to watch from the top of this ridge for eternity. I imagine it too
is how Emerson planned it. To forever enjoy the majesty of the New England
sunset through the pines from this ridge top. Emerson’s amazing rock deserves
further description. It is shaped almost like the Matterhorn and is quite large
at about 6 feet tall. Upon closer inspection I thought to myself “it is one
giant piece of beautiful quartz – a giant gem”. But it gets even better. Just
below the name plate the quartz is almost lemonade yellow and above the tablet
it is light purple and almost translucent. What a bold, fitting and quietly
stunning monument to this incredible man. You can tell how much this man loved
his girls. Lidian his wife is by his side on the left and there are beautiful
bronze tulips inlaid on her stone. Ellen Tucker Emerson, his daughter is on his
right side and judging by the inscription on her grave, she was every bit a
giant of a person through character, intellect, faith and good deed that her
father was. I stood there in quiet, respectful reflection – taking in the peace
of the moment. I then left and as I was walking down Author’s ridge I noticed a
grave marker that was a tiny sleeping little stone girl. Reminded me of my
little girl and my heart silently and privately broke for the father who lost
his little sweetheart so young – and I prayed to God that I would never loose
mine. The loving simplicity of the little stone sleeping girl left a mark
forever in my heart and memory. It made me think – as Clint Eastwood once said
in a forgotten western film “we all got it coming kid”. I too thought about how
every second of every hour of every day is a beautiful amazing gift that comes
only once and then it is gone forever. I hope that I can say when I die – even
though I will never be even the merest shadow of the greats who rest peacefully
in Sleepy Hollow – that I will take the advice of Thoreau and not “Discover
that I had not lived”.
Comments
Post a Comment