Published in collaboration with the Walden Woods Project by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Now Mariner Books, an imprint of Harper Collins).

What Readers are Saying

NPR, Living Lab Radio, Heather Goldstone: “The new “Guide to Walden Pond,” connects the dots between the book and the place.” 

Wall Street Journal, Danny Heitman:  “Mr. Thorson is a lucid writer… But if he is insistently instructive, it’s perhaps because he has so much to teach. Odd facts freckle every page.”

Literary Hub: An excerpt titled “Did Thoreau actually live at the pond?”

Boston Globe, Cindy Cantrell:  This “is a step-by-step guide to the place where Henry David Thoreau lived, wrote, and philosophized for more than two years.” 

Providence Journal, Betty Cotter:  “Thorson’s book details the synergistic relationship between Thoreau as writer, thinker and naturalist and his favorite habitat.”

Take the Video Tour in Fifteen Stops

This  34 minute video, A Walk at Walden Pond, follows the fifteen stops of the book. It was made by Thoreau Society Staff (Magdalena Bermudez) during the Covid-19 pandemic in lieu of the author’s tour during each Annual Gathering each July.

Page Through the Book

Leaving the Visitor Center together, we’ll circumnavigate the shoreline of a beautiful small glacial lake made famous by Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, which launched American environmentalism. 

  

Armchair readers and trail-walkers alike can explore the scenes, sounds, animals, plants, and people that made this iconic place world famous.  Did you know that….

  

Abigail May Alcott sketched Henry Thoreau rowing his boat at the Waterfront? That Red Foxes prowled Sandbank Cove before barking at him in the moonlight?

  

That schoolchildren frequent the Pond Path en route to Thoreau’s House Site? That at Deep Cove, Henry boated beneath bowers of grapes?

That Walden Pond was partially filled during railroad construction and that its western basin is shaped liked a star?

Frequently Asked Questions:   FAQs.

Additional Reviews:   Reviews & Press

Photo credits above: Cover by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Red fox image from book  by © Stefan Huwiler/imagebroker/Corbis. Painting of May Alcott (Abigail May Alcott Nieriker) by Rose Peckham from Wikipedia. Grapes photo from book by F Schussler/Getty Images.  Oblique aerial photo (from the book) copyright Scot Miller.