A Day with Louisa and Henry...

Dear Diary,

A wonderful first day in Concord.  I spent it visiting Walden Pond and Orchard House, the home of Louisa May Alcott and where she wrote Little Women.  It was my first visit since discovering my connection with her.  She is a cousin, as we share the same great grandfather.  The little thing that resonated the most with me was the pressed Queen Anne's Lace (wild carrot) hanging in her bedroom window.  I have press that wild flower for years and hung it in my window and also on my Christmas tree as it reminds me of snowflakes.  A small point of connection but it just hints at those invisible threads that link us to our ancestors.

Walden Pond was as beautiful and tranquil as ever and being not on a weekend, blissfully empty.  I left my little mica token at the site of his cabin...extra photograph...and then just wandered the trails.  Today is Henry's 199th birthday and I am planning on visiting his birth house for cake and lemonade but first I will head out to Fruitlands...the site of the house Bronson Alcott and his family lived in during the time of their failed experiment in utopian living.  It is a beautiful place.

The Abbey is delightful and last night we celebrated the feast day of St. Benedict- it is St. Benedict Abbey after all.  I had dinner with the monks and shared stories of travel.  Absolutely lovely people and I feel right at home already.  The weather is growing quite hot but the skies are blue so it makes for good sauntering...Henry's word for walking.

The daisies in my collage are for Louisa and Henry both who didn't follow the "crowd" but lived their lives outside the fence of convention as it were.  When Louisa was asked why she didn't marry she famously said, "I prefer to paddle my own canoe"!