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A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (Writings of Henry D. Thoreau)

Henry David Thoreau,

Carl F. Hovde (Editor),

William L. Howarth (Editor),

Elizabeth Hall Witherell (Editor),

John McPhee (Introduction)

3.71 · Rating details · 556 ratings · 55 reviews

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paper, 415 pages

Published June 13th 2004 by Princeton University Press (first published 1849)

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Nov 28, 2019 Daniel Clausen rated it really liked it

Shelves: books-of-2019

I loved this book for so many reasons. I guess the first reason is that it was imperfect. It’s Thoreau’s first published work – self-published – a financial failure. I like that. My first novel was pretty much the same. I think most first time authors have to go through something like this. And usually, despite the book’s many flaws, something good shines through.

The book is full of wonderful descriptive language and tangents that lead the book off into the backwoods of imagination. That’s wond ...more

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Jun 26, 2017 robin friedman rated it it was amazing

A Week With Thoreau

In late August, 1839, Henry David Thoreau and his brother John took a two-week trip on the Concord and Merrimack rivers in a boat called the Musketaquid that they had built themselves. John Thoreau subsequently died of lockjaw in 1842, a death which greatly affected his brother. While living at Walden Pond from 1845-1847, Thoreau worked on the manuscript of what became "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers", and the book was first published, with little commercial succes A Week With Thoreau

In late August, 1839, Henry David Thoreau and his brother John took a two-week trip on the Concord and Merrimack rivers in a boat called the Musketaquid that they had built themselves. John Thoreau subsequently died of lockjaw in 1842, a death which greatly affected his brother. While living at Walden Pond from 1845-1847, Thoreau worked on the manuscript of what became "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers", and the book was first published, with little commercial success in 1849. A revised edition was published after Thoreau's death.

The book describes the Thoreau brothers' river journey on the Concord River from Concord west to Lowell, Massachusetts where it connects with the Merrimack River from Lowell north to Concord, New Hampshire. (The brothers spent one week on land exploring Concord, New Hampshire and its environs, and this is not described in the book.) At the time of the journey Lowell was already a manufacturing center where girls from New England farms lived in large barracks and worked long hours spinning cotton in factories powered by the Merrimack River.

I was familiar with "Walden", but I didn't know this earlier book of Thoreau's. It is a wonderful read. The book is arranged in seven chapters, one for each day of the river journey, and Thoreau describes extensively the rivers and inlets, the land, the plants and animals, the weather, the locks and the people that they encountered on their journey. Thoreau here and elsewhere has a clear and detailed eye for nature.

But the more fascinating part of this book consists of its extended digressions and discussions that are only suggested by the description of the brothers' journey. Thoreau uses the river trip as a jumping-off point for meditations on history, science, literature, education, philosophy, religion, and much else. There is information on the early settlements of Concord and Lowell and of New England, especially involving contact with the Indian tribes. Even with this, most of the book is internalized. On almost every page, Thoreau's text is interspersed with poetry, some of it his own, some by other writers. Thoreau discusses the ancient Greek writers, including Homer and the Greek lyricists, as well as writers including Shakespeare and Goethe. There are long meditations on subjects such as the nature of friendship. Thoreau discusses comparative religion and turns a critical eye on the Puritanical religion of New England. The book shows a great fascination with and knowledge of Eastern thought, which is striking for this time in America's history, particularly with the Bhagavad-Gita.

Near the end of the book, capturing the end of his trip, Thoreau assumes an oratorical tone and his work takes on a philosophical theme. Although the American philosophy of Transcendentalism is notoriously difficult to define, Thoreau here discusses a world beyond the world of our senses and of nature. He alludes to a world of the timeless and of mysticism, which encompasses all religion, and which the evidence of the senses only suggests to us. It is a difficult and inspiring vision, informed greatly by Eastern thought and by Thoreau's friendship with Emerson. The discussion forms a moving conclusion to the book.

With its learning, its love of poetry, its picture of early New England, and its spirituality, "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" is one of the great American books. For readers who know Thoreau only, as I did, through "Walden" and "Civil Disobedience,", this book will be a revelation.

Robin Friedman ...more

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Mar 19, 2017 Jim rated it it was amazing

Shelves: american-literature, literature, philosophy, 19th-century-lit, nature

This is a book that is meant to be read slowly. While ostensibly a travel book, it is actually a book of prose and poetic digressions attached onto a thin narrative. Some of those digressions are incredible. The poetry is not quite the same level, but it can be impressive nonetheless.

It was in 1839 that Henry David Thoreau, accompanied by his brother John, took a boat trip north along the Concord River and, when it met the Merrimack, continued north, though this time upstream. Shortly thereafter ...more

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Feb 10, 2012 Phillip rated it it was amazing

Shelves: poetry, religion, favorites-among-favorites, nature, literature, history-united-states, my-visionaries, rhetoric, owen-barfield, thoreau

This is my second time to read this book. I enjoyed it much more than the first time. Think of it as a beta version of Walden. This book ostensibly presents his experience of a week long boat voyage with his brother John. It is primarily a weave of thoughts of the author inspired throughout the trip. The thoughts include, fish, fishing, local history, scripture, genius, literature, symbols and metaphors...and on and on. The book is well written and beautiful in its own rambling way. It is perfec ...more

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Feb 08, 2019 Rick rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

This book, far from a vacation travelogue, was Thoreau’s first published work. Like any novice effort of someone as talented and unique as Thoreau, it is a mixed work and several kinds of mixed work. There is the journey he and his brother took together, collapsed from the actual two-week duration into a single week. There is poetry, philosophy, biology, botany, theology, history, literary criticism, and much more in the form of long essay length digressions from his journey up and down river. S ...more

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Jun 04, 2019 Illiterate rated it it was ok

A meandering journey in search of the universal in nature, history, poetry, philosophy.

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Aug 10, 2016 Gary rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Thoreau, sincere and erudite, digging through history, using his own brilliance with which to see, speaks to us of river and tree, of Homer and Egyptian, of poetry and prose. The calm mind of Thoreau flows quietly over centuries.

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Aug 29, 2018 Hannah Smith rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: thoreau, i-read-to-know-i-m-not-alone, ethics-moral-philosophy, poetics-and-rhetoric

"But behind the sheaves, and under the sod, there lurks a ripe fruit, which the reapers have not gathered, the true harvest of the year, which it bears forever, annually watering and maturing it, and man never severs the stalk which bears this palatable fruit."

At times a simple and poetic travel narrative, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers follows Thoreau as he weaves together careful descriptions of Nature with intimate musings on friendship, virtue, literature, and culture.

I am tryin ...more

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Jan 01, 2016 Lauren rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

“A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” was Henry David Thoreau’s first published book. In it, one can already see the roots of the ideas he would establish in his great writings like “Walden” and “Civil Disobedience”. As a great fan of Thoreau, I enjoyed taking a step back and seeing the beginnings of a great writer forming themselves in this book. While “A Week” is not quite on the same level as “Walden,” it has its own merits.

The book is an account of a canoeing trip that Thoreau took wi “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers” was Henry David Thoreau’s first published book. In it, one can already see the roots of the ideas he would establish in his great writings like “Walden” and “Civil Disobedience”. As a great fan of Thoreau, I enjoyed taking a step back and seeing the beginnings of a great writer forming themselves in this book. While “A Week” is not quite on the same level as “Walden,” it has its own merits.

The book is an account of a canoeing trip that Thoreau took with his older brother, John, who died suddenly not long after. In many ways, "A Week" also serves as a way to remember what was likely the last major expedition Henry took with his beloved brother before John's tragic death. The brothers traveled on the river from Concord, MA into New Hampshire. "A Week" is a good example of Thoreau’s knack for intermingling gorgeous physical descriptions of nature with philosophical implications. In my mind, Thoreau is in part a great writer because he does not merely notice the beauty of natural scenery, but finds deeper meaning in it. In “A Week,” Thoreau often returns to the theme of rivers, as he and his brother traveled using the river as a guide. He considers the symbolic implications of rivers in the human history of exploring the unknown, writing “Rivers must have been the guides which conducted the footsteps of the first travelers. They are the constant lure, when they flow by our doors, to distant enterprise and adventure… They are the natural highways of all nations, not only leveling the ground, and removing obstacles from the path of the traveler… but conducting him through the most interesting scenery… where the animal and vegetable kingdoms attain their greatest perfection” (5). Thoreau returns to the symbolic implications of rivers various times throughout the book, noting their importance to exploration, their purity, and the idea that they allow for a “highway” that can be traveled without harming the natural environment.

As in much of his work, Thoreau also values wildness and the unknown in “A Week,” writing that “the wilderness is near, as well as dear, to every man. Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild wood which surrounds them, more than to the gardens of men… The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and the jay still screams” (108). For Thoreau, unexplored nature is not merely alluring, but essential to human existence. His definition of morality itself is connected to exploration, first of nature, then of the self. Attention to nature and the seasons, in Thoreau’s view, allows us to glimpse the sublime and become greater for it. He writes that “In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses and feelings, which are all for action, and must wait commonly for the stillness and longer nights of autumn and wholly new life, which no man has lived; that even this earth was made for more mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the hues of October sunsets, we see the portals to other mansions than those which we occupy, not far off geographically” (245).

Later, in language that echoes a famous self-exploration passage in “Walden”, he goes on to add that “It is easier to discover another such new world as Columbus did, than to go within one fold of this which we appear to know so well; the land is lost sight of, the compass varies… But there is only necessary a moment’s sanity and sound senses, to teach us that there is a nature behind the ordinary, in which we have only some vague preemption… as yet. We live on the outskirts of that region. Carved wood, and floating boughs, and sunset skies, are all that we know of it” (249). Like the famous line in “Walden” to “explore your own higher latitudes… Be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought” (215), this passage in “A Week” asks the reader to consider whether he or she has the inner strength to explore “this which we appear to know so well”. Symbolically, the passage seems to point to the sort of interior discovery voyage Thoreau advocates for as a necessary precursor to formation of moral beliefs. To his mind, the October sunset skies, carved wood, and floating boughs of the natural world invite us to journey into the great unknown within ourselves and see what we might find there.

It is because he pays so much attention to the minute details of nature that Thoreau understands humans—and himself—so deeply. In the young man who undertook a canoe expedition on the Concord and Merrimack rivers would one day develop the courageous figure who protested the government’s upholding of slavery and laid the foundations for the civil disobedience of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Nov 19, 2018 R.K. Cowles rated it liked it

Shelves: nature

3 1/2 stars

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Sep 16, 2007 Howard Olsen rated it it was amazing

Throeau's admirers laud him as a nature writer, and often describe this work as a "journal" recording a week's worth of river travel in Van Buren-era Massachusetts. This will not prepare you for the profound pilosophical and literary qualities found in this book. This is no journal. The seven days on the river are a framing device for Thoreau's extended thoughts on nature, religon, America, friendship, fish, and anything else that might cross his mind. Living as we do in an age of specialization ...more

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Jun 28, 2017 Maarten Van doorn rated it it was ok

Shelves: zelfontwikkeling

Didn't finish. Not what I expected. Too much babbling on, without really saying interesting stuff. Of course, such a style was to be expected in a book like this, but this book has a too unfavourable information to noise ratio for my taste.

Already started on Walden, much better so far! ...more

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Jan 19, 2009 Cameron rated it really liked it

a wonderfully sloppier, more circular version of Walden

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Jan 21, 2020 Kirsten rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: university

DNF - Thankfully, I will never know what happened on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday.

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Jul 24, 2018 Michael Holm rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nature, literature

I read this work in another edition - Modern Library published in 1992 which includes Walden and other works.

Henry Thoreau and his brother, John Jr., built a rowboat and floated down the Concord River from Concord, Massachusetts to the Merrimac River and then on down that river and walked to Concord, New Hampshire. Then they returned to navigate (row and sail) back up the rivers to their starting point. This outing is reported over nine chapters such as Concord, Saturday, Sunday, The Inward
Morn ...more

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Dec 03, 2020 Jim Neeley rated it really liked it

Its taken me a while to get back to my good friend Thoreau, I believe the last book of his was Walden. On the surface, this book was about a boat trip Henry took with his brother John on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers in 1839. Presented as a journal of that trip, it takes the usual dense but wonderful Thoreau meanderings, much like his trip on the rivers. He speaks to the changing landscape and economy of this part of New England at the dawn of the industrial revolution. He gives a wonderful h ...more

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Aug 07, 2018 Dan Graser rated it it was amazing

"At intervals we were serenaded by the song of a dreaming sparrow or the throttled cry of an owl, but after each sound which near at hand broke the stillness of the night, each crackling of the twigs, or rustling among the leaves, there was a sudden pause, and deeper and more conscious silence, as if the intruder were aware that no life was rightfully abroad at that hour."

This transcendentalist travelogue detailing almost two weeks of travel of the titled New England rivers, to and from Concord ...more

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May 15, 2020 Robert Reinhard rated it really liked it

A great pleasure to follow his mind up the river traveling with his brother who is never named or described and to read the immediate story and nature accounts and the offshoot essays in between the other paragraphs. In hindsight very modern. Thoreau has read the great books and poems of literary history but he also finds every one of their words written in almost a parallel script in the nature and people he observes. And there's the practical skill for example one night when he climbs up a mou ...more

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Sep 19, 2018 Ethan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This was my first formal exposure to Thoreau, though I was familiar with him before reading this book. Though I had a basic understanding of his main philosophical beliefs, I was just astounded at how deeply and sincerely is was able to communicate them. This book was such that each sentence was its own little book, and I saw so many sentences that I could write a whole essay over alone. This book is in no way easy reading. You have to take it slow and often read passages multiple times, but it ...more

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Dec 09, 2018 Steve 'Rat' rated it it was ok

I understand not judging a book by its cover, but I still feel it should be safe to judge one by its title. After enjoying HDT's 'Maine Woods' I was disappointed that Concord & Merrimack was such a tangential mess. To be fair, some of those tangents are interesting. But unfortunately there are also plenty of times when 'tangential' is being very polite.

When you go for a long hike or on a similar activity your mind tends to wander. This book is not a record of the trip itself but rather of those ...more

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Apr 15, 2018 Amy rated it liked it

This book reads in many ways like "Walden." Thoreau switches back and forth between the journey at hand and the nature surrounding it (he and his brother's travels on the Concord and Merrimack), and his thoughts on humanity. It reads in some ways like journal entries. Those who value "Walden" will find much of the same here. ...more

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Jun 21, 2019 Noah added it

Shelves: quit-reading

I read 1/3 of it. That's all the energy I could muster. I've enjoyed Thoreau in small doses, and I loved the recent biography of him, but I can't subject myself to pages and pages about his critique of 19th century prose or his thoughts about 19th century literature. I've run out of steam and patience for his rococo metaphors and disconnected musings. ...more

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Oct 21, 2017 Hal Brodsky rated it liked it

Shelves: kindle

a bit too thick and wandering for me. I did highlight some good quotes to look back on later.

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Nov 05, 2018 Rebekah Byson rated it it was amazing

Thoreau is a writer that works a magic on my soul that I can't explain. ...more

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Mar 18, 2020 Lydia G rated it it was amazing

WOW! I even found maps to find out that these places are gone now, or still there. Very good read.

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Dec 30, 2020 Goodreads user rated it it was amazing

Magnificent book. The long digressions, though they sometimes be indecipherable, add to its charm. Thoreau describes his surroundings and tells of his past experiences in a very seductive prose—his evident specialty.

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Jan 10, 2021 Patrick Murtha rated it it was amazing

Bracingly original, especially in structure, and entirely self-recommending.

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Mar 20, 2021 Bob Beckert rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Arcadian

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Mar 18, 2017 Jack Alexander rated it did not like it · review of another edition

I liked the parts about the actual boat trip, though after reading it, I have serious doubts that he actually took the trip from Concord MA to Concord NH by boat. In this book his writing style seems to wander around temporarily, he frequently repeats actual phrases and themes, he copied text directly from other sources without giving credit, and his rhetoric was often nonsense making for difficult read and an incoherent story.

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Jun 29, 2018 Tom Pare' rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Inspired and inspiring. Not a narrative, per se, but a number of meditations loosely tied to each day of the week.

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About Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau (born David Henry Thoreau) was an American author, naturalist, transcendentalist, tax resister, development critic, philosopher, and abolitionist who is best known for Walden, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and his essay, Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral opposition to an unjust state.

Thoreau's books ...more