Melville is said to have taken part of his inspiration for "Moby-Dick" from the view of the mountain from his house Arrowhead in Pittsfield, since its snow-covered profile reminded him of a great white sperm whale's back breaking the ocean's surface. Melville dedicated his next novel, "", to "Greylock's Most Excellent Majesty", calling the mountain "my own ... sovereign lord and king". In August 1851 Melville and a few friends, including the young poet Sarah Morewood, camped for a night on Greylock's summit. Thoreau summited and spent a night in July 1844. His account of this event in "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" described his approach up what is today the Bellows Pipe Trail. Scholars contend that this Greylock experience transformed him, affirming his ability to do these excursions on his own, following his brother John's death; and served as a prelude to his experiment of rugged individualism at Walden Pond the following year in 1845.