Thoreau's Cabin at Walden Pond

Granite markers give a sense of the cabin's perimeter, but it's only the foundation of the chimney that was found. Another marker nearby explains that the chimney was discovered in 11/11/1945 by Roland Wells Robbins. A big pile of rocks off to the side of the cabin's original location testifies to moved visitors who leave a marker. (Some of the stones are painted or decorated with messages. One says, "Thoreau's mother did his laundry," so we won't get too carried away.). But in front of those rocks is a great quote from Walden on yet another plaque, of painted wood: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life. And see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

Still, the best of the plaques marks the chimney foundation:

Beneath these Stones

lies the Chimney Foundation

of Thoreau's Cabin 1845-1847

"Go thou my incense upward

from this hearth"