Through the length of American history runs a current of “plain living and high thinking” that draws upon the world’s many wisdom traditions. That underground current wells up in a spring from time to time and place to place, giving expression to something essentially American, while at the same time, in protest to much that America would come to represent. At the heart of it all lies Walden Pond. In this part II, we examine the transcendental wisdom of the 19th century American Renaissance by focusing on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Concord, Massachusetts.