Transcendent

I spent Sunday with my friend Heidi; we're making a tradition of getting together to geek out over history. This time we did it Transcendentalist-style, visiting Concord MA with stops at Ralph Waldo Emerson's home (whose robotic weirdo tour guides said over and over that "the house remains in the Emerson family") and the Old Manse, which is where Emerson wrote his "Nature" essay, babealicious Nathaniel Hawthorne spent three years writing until he got kicked out for nonpayment of rent, and Henry David Thoreau swanned about, gardening for Hawthorne and ice skating, among other things. Oh and the "shot heard round the world" was fired from a spot you can see from the house. Pretty neat stuff. The tour guide there was SO in love with Nathaniel Hawthorne. He spent his honeymoon at the Old Manse and he and his bride took to carving things in the windows using her diamond. "Oh, it was SO romantic," gushed the guide. "And look at how Nathaniel just carves in those big letters! What an animal!"

OK so I added that last bit about the animal, but still. N.H. is totally this woman's imaginary bf. Really though she was a fantastic tour guide. I get excited about old stuff and this was some primo old stuff. There was a clock in the Old Manse that had been chiming since before the U.S.A. was the U.S.A. Also a freaky stuffed female juvenile great horned owl under glass.

After the house tours Heidi and I ate a picnic lunch in the Old Manse's backyard, then headed to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery to visit the graves of Thoreau, Emerson, Daniel Chester French, and Louisa May Alcott. All in all a super neato day.