Why Does Thoreau Live On?

Our 4-year-old son, Henry, calls it “my rock.” It’s right near our house in Concord, Mass., and we visit it often at the burial ground at Author’s Ridge, the final resting place of Hawthorne and Emerson. It is the plainest yet most impressive of headstones, a small marble slab bearing a single word: HENRY. Before Henry David Thoreau died on May 6, 1862, he whispered four words to his sister that have always puzzled me, at least until now — “Now comes good sailing.” It’s a strange suggestion that the journey of life might only truly begin after death.