Answer:
Henry David Thoreau is known for living in the woods on the shore of Walden Pond, in self-sufficient isolation. Less known, however, is that a year before building his cabin in Concord, Massachusetts, the famous American author and environmentalist accidentally started a forest fire that nearly burned the Concord woods to the ground.Seven years after graduating from Harvard, Henry David Thoreau was drifting through life. Having failed to support himself as a writer, the 26-year-old had bounced from job to job, working as a tutor, a teacher and even as a handyman for poet and fellow Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. In 1844, he was working at his father’s pencil-making business.
That year, Thoreau spent the last day of April fishing in his hometown of Concord with his friend Edward Sherman Hoar. After weeks of abnormally dry weather, the Sudbury River was shallower than normal, which eased the task of finding a catch. By mid-morning, the pair had already harvested a bounty of fish, and went ashore to cook a chowder. Using matches borrowed from a shoemaker who lived along the river, the friends lit a fire in a tree stump.
Explanation:
Thoreau had kindled campfires numerous times without incident, but this time strong spring winds whipped the flames, and cascading sparks set ablaze the long, wiry grasses around the stump. Thoreau and Hoar furiously stomped the burning grass and beat the fire with a board they hauled from the boat.
