A Thoreau impersonator bids a fond farewell to Walden Pond
Native Information
After 26 years in character because the Nineteenth-century transcendentalist author, Richard Smith is hanging up his straw hat.
CONCORD, Mass. — A bearded man in a waistcoat and tall straw hat emerged from a cabin on Walden Pond and confronted a gaggle of individuals carrying shorts and sun shades. They had been interested in his solitary life within the woods.
They addressed him as Henry David Thoreau, the Nineteenth-century transcendentalist author, however they had been chatting with Richard Smith, a historian who has been Walden Pond State Reservation’s resident Thoreau impersonator since 1999.
“How do you get your meals?” a boy requested. “Do you hunt for it and fish?”
“I’ve given up the consuming of flesh,” the person answered. “I discover it unpleasant to my conscience. My bean area is a few hundred rods again.”
A girl requested: “Do you’re feeling that weight loss plan was wholesome for you? As a result of some historians, after your demise, questioned in the event you had been malnourished.”
“I really feel more healthy than I’ve ever been. Being within the woods is sort of a tonic.”
“Do you assume you’ll dwell right here perpetually?” another person requested.
The person grew to become melancholy. “No,” he mentioned. “In reality, I’m leaving at present. I really feel I’ve completed all that I got down to do. I’ve found what dwelling is all about. I’ve found an amazing deal about solitude, independence and self-reliance.”
Smith, 65, spoke these phrases as Thoreau but in addition as himself. He took off the straw hat, breaking character for good.
“Yeah, it’s the final time I’m doing this,” he mentioned. “That is the day Henry Thoreau left the pond, on Sept. 6, 1847. And after 26 years, that is my retirement.”
Smith was saying goodbye to his double life. As himself, he has watched the Pittsburgh Steelers on TV within the firm of his cats, Bubble and Squeak, at his dwelling within the suburbs. As Thoreau, he has spent quiet days within the solitude of the one-room cabin, with its wood-burning range, straw mattress and plain writing desk, usually stepping exterior to ponder nature.
Over the many years, he has educated numerous excessive schoolers, literary pilgrims and Unitarian church teams about Thoreau’s experiment in dwelling merely. He has regaled 1000’s of tourists with tales of hanging out together with his transcendentalist buddies, Ralph Waldo Emerson and poet Ellery Channing. He has instructed of when the “Alcott women” visited him within the forest and the way he would job Louisa Might with chopping wooden.
He usually recounted the story of the night time he spent in jail after he had refused to pay the Massachusetts ballot tax in protest of slavery. And he established annual traditions. On New Yr’s Day, he lit a hearth within the cabin’s range and supplied guests cookies he had baked from an 1847 recipe calling for bitter cream and caraway seeds.
The gig had its challenges. In addition to having to put on an itchy frock coat on sweltering summer time days and forcing himself to not utter contractions, the job meant setting some Thoreau followers straight about sure issues. He was not a hermit, for one factor. The cabin on Walden Pond was close to prepare tracks, and he usually visited his household on the town, the place his mom did his laundry for him.
On Smith’s final day, the park’s rangers held a farewell occasion for him on the guests’ heart close to the car parking zone. A cake was served with frosting depicting him as Thoreau strolling down a woodsy highway. He gave a slideshow presentation that chronicled his journey and included an image of him shaking fingers with Don Henley of the Eagles, who based the Walden Woods Venture.
“There have been different Thoreaus,” mentioned Peter Alden, 81, a birder who works within the present store. “Richard adopted somebody, who adopted another person. Now another man will develop into our new Thoreau. It’s unhappy that he’s performed, however he’s able to do one thing completely different.”
Later that afternoon, beneath a purple oak tree by the pond, Smith conveyed that Thoreau was not just a few stuffy historic personage to him, however a radical determine who had altered the course of his life.
Raised in Cleveland in a conservative Catholic family, Smith grew to become smitten with American historical past in center college. On holidays, he steered his household to Civil Warfare websites like Gettysburg and Lookout Mountain. He went on to main in historical past on the College of Akron.
“I obtained actually concerned in Akron’s punk scene and began singing in bands,” he mentioned. “It was the Reagan ’80s, and we had been standing as much as who we thought was this immoral clueless chief. That’s once I began studying Thoreau.
“Thoreau questioned all the things, and that basically resonated with the punk rock aspect of me,” he mentioned. “I grew to become drawn to the transcendentalists, their perception of nature being divine, and it’s nonetheless a part of my spirituality at present.”
He rolled up his sleeves to indicate the tattoos protecting his arms, which included depictions of Emerson and a long-bearded Thoreau.
In his 30s, Smith labored at a dwelling historical past museum in Akron, the place he impersonated an antebellum-era brick maker and a schoolmaster. One weekend, he made a pilgrimage to Thoreau’s hometown.
“In Harmony, I used to be in a position to inform folks, ‘I’m a transcendentalist,’ and so they simply obtained it,” Smith mentioned. “So I made a decision to maneuver there.”
Whereas working as a ranger for the city’s Minute Man Nationwide Historic Park, he generally dressed as Thoreau to greet guests on a footbridge. When some Walden Pond park rangers heard about his act, they invited him to impersonate Thoreau on their grounds.
A few yr in the past, Smith mentioned, one thing felt completely different.
“There was one morning, once I needed to meet some excessive schoolers, and I used to be similar to, ‘I don’t actually need to do that at present,’” he mentioned. “It felt like a slog to placed on all the garments. Then that feeling stored taking place. I believed it may be an indication from the universe.
“It doesn’t flip me on anymore,” he mentioned. “And I don’t need to be on autopilot, as a result of I nonetheless love being Thoreau, and I need to cease earlier than I hate being Thoreau. My job is to get folks to care about him, so if I’m not caring anymore, what’s the purpose?
“He mentioned as soon as, ‘I’d not have anybody undertake my mode of dwelling on any account.’ But right here I’m, not simply adopting him, however pretending to be him. I believe he’d additionally need me to get my very own life. I’ve plans to focus alone writing now.”
That night, Smith’s associates held a gathering for him on the Barrow Bookstore, which is thought for its huge assortment of transcendentalist literature. They laid out doughnuts and soda and put up an indication coated with photos of him as Thoreau.
He arrived carrying denims, purple tinted spectacles, purple PF Flyers and a T-shirt emblazoned with the brand of George Harrison’s Darkish Horse report label. Everybody cheered. The proprietor unlocked a show containing a uncommon first version of “Walden.” Smith and his associates tenderly leafed via its pages.
The plan was to maintain the occasion going on the close by Colonial Inn’s tavern, however everybody determined to remain put when a heavy rain started to fall. Seated in a circle, Smith held courtroom, passionately arguing that Reconstruction had not gone far sufficient in bringing equality to the nation after the Civil Warfare.
His love for Thoreau was obvious to his girlfriend, Amity Wilczek, a biologist, from the very begin of their relationship.
“On our early dates, we’d stroll the identical paths Thoreau walked,” Wilczek, 51, mentioned. “He’d be like, ‘Have you ever ever been to Thoreau’s favourite swamp?’ And I’d say, ‘No, however I’d wish to.’”
She thought of his life with out the straw hat.
“I believe he’s going to overlook it greater than he realizes,” she mentioned. “When New Yr’s Day comes round, when it’s time to gentle that fireplace in his little home together with his range, it’s going to be bittersweet. As a result of that’s what he’s all the time performed as Thoreau. And he has all the time referred to it as his home and his range.”
This text initially appeared in The New York Instances.
