spiritual quest for spirituality andimagination. His use of nature symbols such as mountains and rivers became predominantcentral feature in A Week. When he began using his recollective memories to write thebook he used many entries from his journal. He also used other inspirations such as awalking tour he took in southern New England in 1848. It was there he dealt with theissue of the growth of the Merrimack River since 1839. According to Johnson, "By thetime it was published in 1849, A Week was thus composed of a carefully orchestratedseries of excursions through New England, at once a pastoral realm, a primitivewilderness, and a bustling industrial region" (4).Henry and John left Concord on Saturday, August 31, 1839 on the Musketaquid, a boatthey built and gave the Indian name of the Concord River. Thoreau includes things such aswhat the nights were like at their campsites, and their extensive progress up theMerrimack River. Their river journey ended on Wednesday night where they then walkedten miles back to Concord. He mentions the tourist attractions they saw such as the basinand flume at Lincoln, Franconia Notch, and the old man of the mountains they saw fromEcho Lake. He did not necessarily describe these things in great detail, but we can still seethe personal feeling in it (5-6). Due to Thoreau's complex and back and forth personality,in time, he viewed his trip as a trip of the mind, spirit, and body. We get this from hisjournal entries. In them he describes a withdrawal to a timeless world, but does notoverlook things and people that were along the Concord and Merrimack. He wanted toshow nature and man as one (9-10).A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers is one of his most transcendental pieces ofliterature. Walter Harding summarizes: "[Recent critics] see the book as 'a search for thesacred' or 'an exposition of the transcendental experience' or 'a defense of the AmericanIndian' or 'a paean to the Greek gods.'" (Schneide...
