TO THE EDITORS

Are you aware--can you help make the American people aware--of what I discovered on a Thanksgiving Day visit to Walden Pond in Concord, Mass.?

Caterpillar bulldozers have completely destroyed the sacred old dirt Indian footpath that leads (and lead Thoreau) along one whole side of the pond to Thoreau's hut. The trail has been grossly despoiled into what looks like the making of a one-lane highway. I counted 13 trees cut down at the water's edge in one 20-foot section.

This is venal and profane desecration of the sacred banks where the successful (and totally non-violent) American civil rights revolution, and the revolutions in India and South Africa, found their roots.

It is the crest jewel of America's (brief) era of enlightenment. News media, public officials and those with a voice or forum within what remains of contemporary culture have an excellent chance to halt this sacrilege, before Sony-Disney get on board and turn a natural gem into a theme park. The "opposite shore" of the pond remains, at the moment, pristine--so you can see what used to be. The fucked-up side, incredibly, is now forbidden except to "hard hats." The second side goes next.

Please make this venal philistinism a concern of yours so that the nation can learn what is being done to the heart of the town where her revolution, her literary golden age, came to flower.

My concern is for publicity for the soul of Walden Pond. I sign merely as someone who thinks strip-mining is inappropriate at a holy American shrine. --Edward L. Lynch '65   Walpole, Mass.