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After nearly two years I will finally get back to Concord, Massachusetts this weekend. Ah, Concord, Land of the Transcendentalists.

The year after my first trip, I reread Walden, and it was a great experience. I've been trying to read Emerson this past year. Ah, well, maybe after visiting his house tomorrow I'll feel like giving it another go.

I so wanted to get back to Concord last spring. Or this fall. Or anytime. It's not going to happen this year. Knowing that Mitali Perkins has recently been to both Walden Pond and Orchard House only rubs salt in the wound.

Orchard House is wonderful.

When I was at Orchard House last month (Orchard House being the Concord home of the Alcotts, of course), my traveling companion noticed the property survey hanging on a wall. Being someone who is in to surveys, site plans, etc., he noticed the surveyor's signature.

Well, now you can see said survey, too. Click on the plan, scroll down to the bottom, and you'll see that the surveyor was Henry D. Thoreau.

The Concord Free Public Library has a whole array of Thoreau's surveys available on-line.

I'd gotten the impression that he didn't do a whole lot. I've just started rereading Walden (because you just can't be reading too many books at once), and in that first essay I feel (as I did when I first read it, according to my notations) that he doesn't hold working folks in much esteem. Seeing that he really did meaningful work--that could come into play in twenty-first century title searches--may have an impact on my reading of his book.

But is that a good thing? Shouldn't the meaning and significance of his work be right there on the page in front of me regardless of what I know about him?

Ah, a question I struggle with frequently.

Nonetheless, surveyors are cool.

On Monday I finished reading Mr. Emerson's Wife, a historical novel about the rumor (or more) that Henry David Thoreau had a little something going on with Lydia Jackson Emerson, Ralph Waldo's wife. (It offends me to define a woman in terms of her relationship with a man, but there you go.)

Monday night was also geek night on TV. Around nine o'clock, I suddenly realized that Thoreau may very well have been the prototype for today's geeks.

He lived with his mom most of the time.
When he did move out, it was to that cabin on Walden Pond, which sounds like a totally guy-geek place.
He was underemployed.
He had limited experience with members of the opposite sex.
He was handy at fixing things. If they'd had computers back then, you just know he would have been keeping all the other Transcendentalists' laptops up and running.

Several times over the years I've had these bizarre experiences in which my reading intersected with my traveling.

For instance, not long before I took off for Ottawa last weekend, I finished reading A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies by Ellen Cooney, which I heartily recommend if you are a long-married lady, gentle or otherwise. In this book, a character mentions the Rideau River. Wouldn't you know it, last Monday I went biking on the Rideau Canal.

Then, I finished reading Beige by Cecil Castellucci before I even got out of the country. The main character lives in Montreal and twice mentioned poutine. Yup, I ate poutine three times last week. My goal was to eat it once each day, so I failed miserably.

I didn't knock off as many books this vacation as I have on others. For one reason, I was reading Mr. Emerson's Wife by Amy Belding Brown. Though I do love them Transcendentalists, it's not a book for whipping through in the car. Get this, though--yesterday we were in Saratoga Springs and who did I read was there before me? Say, a hundred fifty or sixty years before me? Mr. Emerson himself.

I also didn't do as much book reading because while I was still in Canada I was spending time reading The National Post's series on Mordecai Richler. I was talking about his children's book series here just last...okay, it was back in March. But I am very fond of Richler. The National Post did the series on him because Canadian TV was running a new production of St. Urbain's Horseman, which I read a hundred years ago.

Okay, then I went to The Canadian Museum of Civilization. It had this new exhibit, Face to Face: The Canadian Personalities Hall, and who do you suppose was there? Yes, Samuel de Champlain, but also, Mordecai Richler!

Come on!

You know, but in all the reading I did about him last week, I'm still not sure how to pronounce his name.

Anyway, I just love when my reading and traveling come together like that.

I've been reading a great deal of fantasy the last couple of months, particularly kids' fantasy.And though I've enjoyed a lot of it, I've been looking for a diversion. On Monday while I was at the library, I stumbled upon American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever. The book was on that list of things to read that's buried in my mind because I'd read a review. So I snatched it up.

I've been interested in the Transcendentalists since my college days when I took a course on the history of women in the United States and wrote a paper on Louisa May Alcott. That is not to say I've ever actually understood what Transcendentalism is. Or pursued the interest very rigorously. (I have many interests I don't pursue very rigorously.) But I have been to Orchard House and Fruitlands, which is sort of like pursuing a Transcendental interest. But not very.

Anyway, on the second page of the book Cheever claims that our Louisa was in love with Thoreau and Emerson. (But not at the same time.) Cheever also says that Henry James gave one of Louisa's books a bad review but then "appropriated the adorable, defiant character of Jo March...as a model for his headstrong and independent American woman, Isabel Archer, in Portrait of a Lady."

Wow. I couldn't get through Portrait of a Lady, but, still. Wow.

I've never been so excited on page two of a nonfiction book. I really, really love historical gossip.

And I'm hoping I'll understand Transcendentalism by the time I'm finished. Because everyone should understand that, right?