Davoll's General Store owner Ben Shattuck pens book following in Thoreau's footsteps

Henry David Thoreau once said of walking, that the path a traveler’s “feet describe is so perfectly symbolical of human life — now climbing the hills, now descending into the vales.”

Ben Shattuck’s new book not only follows the paths that Thoreau once took; it also climbs the hills and descends into the vales of his own life.

“Six Walks: In the Footsteps of Henry David Thoreau,” now available at your local bookshop and everywhere books are sold, chronicles the walks that Shattuck took, following Thoreau’s famous footsteps, over the course of several years, and moving from a very difficult time to much happier ones.

Shattuck, along with his brother Will, owns Davoll’s General Store in Dartmouth. In operation since 1793, it’s one of the oldest general stores in the country. He’s also director of the Cuttyhunk Island Writers’ Residency and director and curator of the Dedee Shattuck Gallery in Westport. He’s married to Milton native and actress Jenny Slate, whose screen credits include “Saturday Night Live,” “Parks and Recreation,” and “Bob’s Burgers.”

This book begins and ends with trips to Cape Cod. Shattuck follows in Thoreau’s footsteps on the Cape, in Maine, and of course at Walden Pond, to name just a few of his journeys in this book.

“In the beginning, I walked for distraction, to give myself an assignment, to escape the weight of my days,” Shattuck writes in “Six Walks.”

The first of Thoreau’s walks that Shattuck emulated was on the Cape. He began walking after a breakup, and after he had lost part of a finger, and he would soon get diagnosed with Lyme disease.

Shattuck notes that one walk Thoreau took, to Wachusett, was after the loss of his brother: “Was he doing the same thing I was doing? Walking to husk the dead skin of grief?”

The walks in this book tread the path from grief, on a journey to finding meaning and purpose.

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When Shattuck returns to the Cape in the end, his life is completely changed from what it was when he took those first steps.

“When I first went to Cape Cod to trace [Thoreau’s] path, I wanted an assignment, direction, guidance — and he was that guide. When I went back to Cape Cod years later, to walk some of the sections I had walked the first time, my life was very different: I was engaged; I was about to become a father; my health had improved. What I mean is, I didn't have to go outside looking for meaning or purpose — purpose, by the end, was back at home,” Shattuck told The Herald News.

These days, although Shattuck doesn’t “need” Thoreau in the way that he used to, “I would like to return to northern Maine — the place of some of Thoreau's greatest adventures.”

In putting this book together, Shattuck also followed in Thoreau’s footsteps. He kept a journal, starting with that first walk, just as Thoreau had:

“After I took three of the walks … I saw all the notes and scraps of images I'd collected, and, because my inclination as a writer and painter is to make something of my observations, I put them all together in an essay. That essay, called ‘Three Walks,’ was published in the literary magazine The Common (Amherst). An editor at Tin House saw that essay, and asked if I'd like to turn it into a book — which became “Six Walks.”

He’s got more projects on the way, too.

“I'll have a short story collection coming out next fall or winter. The collection, called ‘The History of Sound,’ is named after a story I also published in The Common. That story, also, has been turned into a screenplay, which will film next spring. After that, I'll also be finishing a novel to be published sometime after 2024,” he said.

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Shattuck is currently on a book tour for “Six Walks,” and there’s a local stop coming up soon, on Tuesday, May 24, at 5 p.m. at Partners Village store in Westport. This will be an in-person event at the bookshop, located at 865 Main Road.

Herald News/Taunton Daily Gazette copy editor and digital producer Kristina Fontes can be reached at kfontes@heraldnews.com. Support local journalism by purchasing a digital or print subscription to The Herald News and Taunton Daily Gazette today.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Ben Shattuck's 'Six Walks' book follows Thoreau's famous footsteps