The Crawford Notch

"To find an American romanticism independent of Europe's, it is best to begin in the mountains, among the sharp peaks and edges from which all romantic pursuits take their bearings." --Lee Rust Brown, The Emerson Museum, 1.

In the Spring of 1832, Ralph Waldo Emerson informed the governing committee of the Boston church he pastored that he could not, in good conscience, continue to administer the Lord's Supper and asked that he be relieved of that duty. The committee responded that they could not so relieve him and, in June, Emerson left Boston in the company of his brother Charles and headed north, first to Maine and then to Conway, New Hampshire. At that point, Charles returned home, but Emerson continued on, crossing through "the cleft of the Notch" where, Brown tells us, he discovered his post-Christian vocation. (See Brown's "Introduction" to The Emerson Museum).