The Situation Just before "The Creation"

Let us continue with our history of the "War for Walden Woods," but first a bit of "pre-history."

In the years (and decades) before the creation of TCCA (the Thoreau Country Conservation Alliance) in 1988, the situation around Walden Pond grew more and more critical despite the heroic efforts of a dynamic and determined woman named Mary P. Sherwood. Mary, who was born in 1906, founded an organization to which she gave the felicitous name of "Walden Forever Wild" (WFW). Mary (and WFW) focussed all of their energies on Walden Pond State Reservation (WPSR), and rightly so, given the dire state of the Reservation. Despite the fact that management of the Reservation had been transferred from Middlesex County to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the mid-1970s, the situation there grew progressively worse. Believe it or not, there were times when 20,000 people would descend upon tiny Walden Pond during a single hot summer day. Over long (three-day) summer weekends, that number would go to Walden each day, trampling the vegetation around the pond, thereby causing serious erosion of its steep banks. Almost singlehandedly during the early 1980s, Mary (then in her early seventies) was able to work miracles at Walden, vanquishing the state bureaucracy, staving off the unruly crowds at Walden, and restoring the section of Walden Pond's shoreline that had been devastated in 1957 by Middlesex County. In a very real sense, Mary is the true hero of Walden because, had it not been for her herculean efforts in the pond's behalf, none of the "good things" that took place there in later years (1988 and after) could have happened.

So, let us salute Mary P. Sherwood and give her the credit she so richly deserves.

Ed Schofield
August 10, 2008