Lilacs in bloom in front of Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. THOREAU ON MACKINAC: Famed Poet Visited Michigan Icon in 1861
May 27, 2013
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He was either too early or too late for the Mackinac Island Lilac Festival.
But Henry David Thoreau, noted writer and poet from Concord, Massachusetts, visited Mackinac Island in 1861 on his final trip before his death from consumption (tuberculosis).
And he mentioned the island's lilacs in his field notebook.
Thoreau's visit was about 80 years before the Lilac Festival started on the island in the 1940s; but since he was there in late July he was a little late in the season that starts the first week of June.
The annual Mackinac Island Lilac Festival was founded in 1949 by Island residents Ling Horn, Nurse Stella King and veterinarian Dr. Bill Chambers as a one day celebration of the lilac with a horse drawn carriage parade. Today, it is a popular 10 day festival June 7-16.
More information at: www.mackinacislandlilacfestival.org.
Thoreau is known for his book "Walden," based on a solitary stay at Walden Pond, and his "Civil Disobedience" essay, among other works.
A new book, "Westward I Go Free: Tracing Thoreau's Last Journey," by Corinne Hosfeld Smith, with a Foreword by Laura Dassow Walls, was published in 2012 by Green Frigate Press, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
The book is about Ms. Smith's 2009 journey tracing Thoreau's route. She is a lifelong Thoreauvian, a prominently published book reviewer, and a librarian at Anna Maria College in Paxton, Massachusetts. She lives an hour west of Walden Pond. Westward I Go Free is her first published book.
"His recurring travels to the Maine Woods and Cape Cod were well documented and have been followed by 'Thoreauvians' for decades," states the publisher. "Not so, however, his 1861 'Journey West' with Horace Mann, Jr., which took the duo from Massachusetts to Minnesota and back. The details of this last, longest, and least-known of Thoreau's excursions were left veiled in mystery -- until now. This is the story of two 19th-century men and a 21st-century woman who was determined to follow their 4,000-mile path."
Thoreau stopped in Worcester, Massachusetts; Albany, New York; Niagara Falls; Detroit; Chicago; Dunleith, Illinois, and Red Wing, Minnesota. Accompanying him on the journey was Horace Mann, Jr., 17-year-old son of the famous politician and education advocate.
Mr. Thoreau and Mr. Mann's return trip took them through Milwaukee, Mackinac Island, Toronto, and Ogdensburg, New York. The two traveled by train, steamer boat, and carriage.
They were on Mackinac from June 30 to the July 4, 1861. During his stay on the Island, Ms. Smith said, Mr. Thoreau took extensive botanical notes and copied down local folk stories he learned from the county clerk, William Johnston, brother in-law of noted Indian agent and author Henry Rowe Schoolcraft.
Mackinac Island was the seat of Mackinac County until 1882, when the seat was moved to St. Ignace.
Thoreau's notes were mostly scientific, Ms. Smith has enhanced some of the details based on her research of the places he visited and her own observations.
"All these places that he didn't really leave detailed notes, I kind of have to try to recreate it and read the histories of what was happening in these places and fill in the blanks that he didn't write down," Ms. Smith told interviewer Jane Alexander of the Mackinac Island Town Crier before her journey. "He probably didn't expect anybody but him to look at his notebook, so he knew what he meant, and he didn't necessarily write it in a way that would be understandable to somebody else. It's a challenge."
"If he were here [on Mackinac] today, and if he were bicycling around, he would be stopping every foot to write down all of those lovely plants growing on either side of the road," she added. "He would be stopping for chicory, and Queen Anne's lace, and asters, and all those things. Those weren't out when he was here -- but he would be wanting to make a detailed inventory of the wildflowers, I think. If he were here, that's what he'd do."
According to Ms. Smith, the two men stayed on the Island at the Mackinac House, near where the City Park is today.
Mr. Mann also died of tuberculosis, seven years after the trip, at the age of 24.
"This is a tragic story," Ms. Smith said during a lecture at the Mackinac Island Library, "and that's another reason, probably, why this tour hasn't been talked about too much, because it seems like it has two unhappy endings, pretty much, because 'life is a tragedy at best.'
"Unfortunately, he never got to [publish] this [notebook]," Ms. Smith added, "and he never formally did a book about this journey, which is so rich with so many kinds of different places and things to see and do.
The Lilac Festival is slated June 7-14 this year.
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