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What places in New England were most important to America's first great naturalist writer, Henry David Thoreau? Would Thoreau even recognize those places today? Those questions are at the heart of "Searching for Thoreau" by Tom Slayton, just published by Images from the Past of Bennington and now available at bookstores throughout the region. Slayton is former editor of Vermont Life Magazine and now serves as Editor Emeritus of that publication. He is a freelance writer and editor with more than 40 years of experience as a journalist in New England. He’s also a committed hiker. Over the past several years, author Slayton, a member of the Green Mountain Club, the Appalachian Mountain Club, and the 4,000-footer Club of the AMC, retraced Thoreau's journeys in a series of hikes and excursions to places in New England that Thoreau loved. Among the places included are: • Mount Katahdin and northern Maine • Cape Cod's Outer Beach • The Concord and Merrimack Rivers • The White Mountains of New Hampshire • Walden Pond and the woods and fields around Concord, Mass. In 10 vigorous chapters, "Searching for Thoreau" transports the reader to those and other places that were important to Thoreau's development. Slayton shares Thoreau's descriptions of those places along with his own first-hand observations concerning the same places today. Author and environmentalist Bill McKibben noted: "Tom Slayton has done something difficult in this wonderful book: shed new light on old Henry David, and in charming, funny, thoughtful prose that the master himself would have enjoyed!" In addition to revisiting some of the wildest and most unspoiled places in the region, "Searching for Thoreau" speculates on how and why many of these places have changed over the years, and offers an evaluation of the substantial amount of wild country still left in New England. A bibliography, notes and maps are included, plus "how to go" information enabling readers to visit Thoreau's New England themselves. |
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