Surveying the Interval: Henry David Thoreau’s Climb of Saddle-back Mountain in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

Abstract

In July 1844, on route to the Catskill Mountains in New York, Henry David Thoreau climbed Saddleback Mt. (now Greylock), the highest natural point in Massachusetts. Situated in the northwestern part of the state, the mountain is traversed by a network of hiking trails, including the tail end of the Appalachian Trail. Thoreau later described this experience in his first published book A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, whose manuscript he wrote during his stay at Walden Pond between 1845 and 1847. In my paper, I analyze Thoreau’s description of the climb and cast the ascent as a meditation in the Romantic tradition of the quest for the sacred and for the sublime.