Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was born in Concord MA and graduated from Harvard College in 1837. Like many college graduates of the time he became a teacher, and taught in his brother's school from 1837 to 1841.

Ralph Waldo Emerson befriended him and gave him a job as handyman and caretaker in his house so that they could talk, and Thoreau would have some money and a quiet place to think and write.

Thoreau absorbed many of Emerson's ideas, but as a younger man without fame or family responsibilities, he could actually put them into practice.

In 1845 he built a small house (photo) on land owned by Emerson on the shore of Walden Pond, three miles from the center of Concord.

He planted a beanfield and lived by selling beans and doing whatever work he cound find: occasional teaching, surveying, handyman jobs, even ditch-digging.

He needed only a few hours' work per week to buy the few things he needed. The rest of the time he spent observing and communing with nature, taking notes and writing. He wanted to "live deep and suck out all the marrow out of life." (Photo essay)

He stayed at the pond for more than two years, then returned to Concord to write, with brief periods elsewhere. In 1849 his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers appeared, to almost universal disregard.

His most famous work, Walden, or Life in the Woods was published in 1854, and eventually made his reputation as a supreme individualist, naturalist, conservationist, pacifist and proponent of Transcendentalism, the spiritual philosophy developed and espoused by Emerson and his circle.

Thoreau's pacifist writings inspired Gandhi, and his writings on nature and life apart from society have inspired generations of conservationists, ecologists and lovers of the outdoors.

He wrote about his travels in The Maine Woods (1863), Excursions (1863), Cape Cod (1865) and A Yankee in Canada (1866). In all, his writings fill 20 volumes.

Thoreau died in 1862 of tuberculosis and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord MA. His grave and Walden Pond are regularly visited by hundreds of the people inspired by his writing and his example.

Here's a photo gallery of Walden Pond in winter, with quotations from Thorea's writings.

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Thoreau's Grave Walden Pond Ralph Waldo Emerson Louisa May Alcott Sleepy Hollow Cemetery Concord MA Famous New Englanders