An Illustrated Lecture: Thoreau and the Language of Trees with Richard Higgins

This original illustrated talk explores Thoreau’s deep connections to trees. Using Thoreau’s words, photographs of historic trees and his own black-and-white photographs of trees today, Higgins looks at Thoreau’s keen perception of trees, the poetry he saw in them, and how they fed his soul. He presents trees as a central thread connecting all parts of Thoreau’s being—heart, mind, and spirit.

 Trees were central to Henry David Thoreau’s creativity as a writer, his work as a naturalist, his thought, and his inner life. He admired their beauty, studied how they grew, took them as spiritual companions and wrote about them as few have. When he said the poet loves the pine tree as his own “shadow in the air,” he was speaking about himself. In short, he spoke their language.

RICHARD HIGGINS is a writer and editor in Concord, Massachusetts, and the author of Thoreau and the Language of Trees, published by the University of California Press. A former Boston Globe staff writer, he is the coauthor of Portfolio Life. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, Christian Century, Esquire, and Smithsonian and many other publications.

He will be selling and signing his book at the event.

Free with Museum Admission

For more information please call the Museum at 508-896-3867 ext. 133.