A Walk Along the Battle Road Trail with Henry David Thoreau
A man accumulates a myriad facts, lays them up in his memory, and then in some spring of his life, he saunters abroad into the Great Fields of thought.
To use this trail guide, begin your journey at the Meriam’s Corner parking lot and head east along the trail. Each stop corresponds to a numbered post.
Map
NPS
As you read, note Thoreau’s words are in italics. These quotes have been taken from Thoreau’s journals, as well as his essays and books, including “Walking”, “Life Without Principle”, Walden, and The Maine Woods.
Henry David Thoreau reasoned the purpose of a daily walk was “positively to exercise both body and spirit.” Furthermore, it was “the enterprise and adventure of the day”; a time to observe and reflect on the natural world and to consider how the lessons of nature could be used for the betterment of mankind. According to Thoreau, understanding and following the rhythms of nature provided one with the opportunity to live in harmony with one’s self and other human beings.
In the mid-nineteenth century, America was changing rapidly, from a largely agrarian society to one which relied on industry, machinery and commerce. Thoreau thought it crucial for humans to maintain their connection to wild places and dedicated his thoughts, writings, and in fact his life to sharing this fundamental belief.
Henry David Thoreau
NPS
"Each town should have a park… where a stick should never be cut for fuel, a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation.”
With the words of Thoreau as your guide, this short ½ mile walk will take you on your own journey of discovery and connection with the stories and protected landscape of Minute Man National Historical Park. The walk begins at Meriam’s Corner in Concord and continues east through the farm fields, the predominant landscape of Thoreau’s day.
Stop one near the Meriam's Corner parking area.
NPS/Jackson
Stop 1: Meriam’s Corner
Bronson Alcott, Concord teacher, philosopher and father of author Louisa May Alcott, said of Thoreau, “It seems happy circumstance that he should have been a native of Concord, born near the battlefield of the War of Independence.” As you walk the Battle Road Trail, you may wish to read the panels to learn more about the events of April 19, 1775.
“America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant. Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue to be slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be born free and not live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?”
Great Fields Stop 2
NPS/Jackson
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Stop 2: Farming Fields
“In old countries, as England, going across lots is out of the question. You must walk in some beaten path or other, though it may be a narrow one. We are tending to the same state of things here, when practically a few will have grounds of their own, but most will have none to walk over but what the few allow them.”
Once privately owned, these fields have been plowed and tended by many hands since the 17th century. Today, Minute Man National Historical Park seeks to uphold that farming tradition, as well as the historical landscape, through agricultural leases. The park also protects the opportunity for all visitors to explore and enjoy the bucolic scenery throughout the year.
“When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods; what would become of us if we walked only in a garden or a mall?”
Great Fields Stop 3
NPS/Jackson
Stop 3: Into the Woods
By 1850 only 11% of concord’s landscape remained wooded, usually in the form of small scattered lots. Thoreau valued these forested tracts.
It is remarkable how persistently Nature endeavors to keep the earth clothed with wood of some kind—how much vitality there is in the stumps and roots of some trees, though small and young.
Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness.
It is in vain to dream a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such… I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador any greater wildness than in some recess in Concord… A little more manhood or virtue will make the surface of the globe anywhere thrillingly novel and wild.
Great Fields Stop 4
NPS/Jackson
Stop 4: Upon the Hill
This area has been an ideal place to call home since time immemorial; the indigenous peoples of the region taking advantage of spots like this with dry uplands or elevated areas adjacent to low wetlands
I love that the rocks should appear to have some spots of blood on them, Indian blood at least; to be convinced that the earth has been crowded with men, living enjoying suffering, that races passed away have stained the rocks with their blood, that the mould I tread on has been animated, aye, humanized. I am the more at home. I farm the dust of my ancestors, though the chemist’s analysis may not detect it. I go forth to redeem the meadows they have become.
The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit—not a fossil earth, but a living earth.
Great Fields Stop 5
NPS/Jackson
Stop 5 (No Post): Man vs Nature
Farming was the primary use of this land at the time of the American Revolution, in Thoreau’s day, and still today under the park’s agricultural leases.Thoreau and his fellow Transcendentalists believed in the connectedness of man and Nature. They believed that while men come and Nature is eternal, each person carries some of that eternal nature within themselves. Thoreau loved wildness more than cleared land, to be sure, but felt that a farmer who remained in tune with the nature of his land could manage it productively.
The weapons with which we have gained our most important victories, which should be handed down as heirlooms from father to son, are not the sword and lance, but the bushwhack, the turf cutter, the spade, and the boghoe, rusted with the blood of many a meadow, and begrimed with the dust of many a hard-fought field.
I read of a number of acres of bog that some farmer has redeemed, and the number of rods of stone wall that he has built, and the number of tons of hay he now cuts, or of bushels of corn or potatoes he raises there, and I feel as if I had got my foot down on the solid and sunny earth, the basis of all philosophy, and poetry, and religion even. I have faith that the man who redeemed some acres of land the past summer redeemed also parts of his character.
Great Fields Stop 6
NPS/Jackson
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Post 6: Birthplace
I have never got over my surprise that I should have been born into the most estimable place in all the world, and in the nick of time too.
Directly in front of you, ½ mile across these fields, is the farmhouse where Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817, “in the Minott House, on the Virginia Road, where father occupied Grandmother’s thirds, carrying on the farm.” He was born into a landscape that included mostly farmland. He most valued nature in its raw and untrammeled form, but was affected by these open vistas.
Two or three hours walking will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see… The walker in familiar fields which stretch around my native town sometimes finds himself in another world… The landscape lies far and fair within and the deepest thinker is the furthest travelled.
The earth I tread on is not a dead, inert mass. It is a body, has a spirit, is organic, and fluid to the influence of its spirit, and to whatever particle of that spirit is in me.
Thoreau's Birthplace
NPS
The Battle Road Trail
NPS/Jackson
Following in his footsteps
As you walk back to the trailhead at Meriam’s Corner or continue east along the Battle Road Trail, consider these questions:
Which of the quotations resonates most with you? Why?
Thoreau walked these “familiar fields” to help him focus and sort his thoughts. Where do you go or what do you do when you need to think?
What do the fields, woods and trail of Minute Man NHP mean to you?
How do you reconcile the many stories and purposes of this park – the battle and bloodshed of the Revolutionary War; culture and life in the 18th century; the authors and thoughts of the 19th century transcendental movement; opportunities for recreation, reflection and learning in the 20th and 21st centuries? What would Thoreau think of this place?
What value, if any, do National Parks in general have in our modern times?
Last updated: November 23, 2020
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Contact Info
Mailing Address:
North Bridge / Park Headquarters
174 Liberty St.
Concord,
MA
01742
