Walden

 

Though about an actual experience—two years in a log cabin in the woods—Thoreau’s Walden is now usually read as a journal of personal freedom and awareness. It is a treasure on both levels. Thoreau walked into the woods on July 4th, 1845. They did not take long to reach, being only a couple of miles from the center of Concord, Massachusetts, where he had lived most of his life. Yet solitude could still be had and Thoreau wanted to strip life to its core, away from the lies and gossip of society. After building a 10 by 15 foot cabin, his time was pretty much free. He did grow some beans to sell at market, but even this he enjoyed, continuing with it only as long as necessary to cover some very modest costs. An idyllic life ensued, of walks, reading, watching birds, writing, and simply being.

 

This is a concept so foreign to most people, then as now, that it seems either a waste of time or subversive. Yet Thoreau felt that he was richer than anyone he knew, having everything he materially needed and the time to enjoy it. The average person, with all their things, had continually to labor to afford them, meanwhile neglecting nature’s beauty and the gentle work of the soul, which solitude brings.

Thoreau lived in the time of slavery. He once spent a night in jail for not paying his taxes to the government that maintained it. But his objection was not merely to the slavery of the negro, but to the slavery of all people. As Michael Meyer noted in Walden and Civil Disobedience, Walden could be seen as an emancipation narrative, the chronicle of an escape from delusion. For Thoreau, the metaphorical Deep South was two miles away; Concord, though it contained friends and family, was a sort of prison that people did not know they were in, enslaved by materialism and conformity. Thoreau famously declared to his blank page, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

His time by Walden Pond was a conscious exercise in what modern self-development would call “de-scripting.” He wanted to recover the total freedom of mind that was his at birth but that he suspected (despite his education) had been warped by “conventional wisdom” and the prejudices of his upbringing. He withdrew in order to stop himself being a social reflection, to realize what being a free individual meant. Discussing the great explorers of the day, he mused over John Franklin, the Englishman who was lost on an expedition, and Grinnell, the American who went looking for him:

 

 

With his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau now stands as a pillar of what might be called the ethic of American individualism. The irony of this is that they both railed against so much of what the United States and other western countries have arguably become: rich consumer playgrounds shadowed by a lack of personal meaning. Yet Walden, and the writings of Emerson that so influenced it, is as attractive as ever to those seeking something more. Many of the thoughts and ideas in it have entered the public consciousness, and it has been one of the key inspirations for the modern generation of personal development writers. For example, among the descriptions of nature and people we find:

 

 

And:

 

 

And this, which could have been written by Norman Vincent Peale or Deepak Chopra:

 

 

Walden was also ahead of its time in environmental sensibility. It roughly follows the sequence of the seasons. Thoreau enjoyed the winter (having built himself a fireplace and chimney) but particularly looked forward to the power and grace of spring’s renewal. Nature was worth saving for its own sake, but few things were more instructive to the examined life than the trees, the water, and the creatures. In one classic confession he remarked, “A match has been found for me at last: I have fallen in love with a shrub oak.” In some of the more poetic lines, Thoreau conveyed a feeling of oneness with his environment:

 

 

Yet what the author saw in nature is never long left unrelated to what he saw in us:

 

 

A railroad passed by the other end of Walden Pond and its busy comings and goings amused and fascinated Thoreau. Technological progress reflected the nation’s glory—or did it?

 

 

This poke against the obsession with innovation and newness is also spot on for today’s culture. It comes as no surprise that Thoreau dismissed the Benjamin Franklin style of up-by-the-bootstraps hard-work heroism. Social standing was unimportant and prosperity was less something to be achieved than to be witnessed in the bounty of nature. Thoreau did not “do much” in his 20s. Work was only necessary to buy time to read, write, and enjoy nature.

However, this does not mean that we have to go and live in a hut and sow beans. Thoreau’s woods are symbolic of the abundance of nature generally, which provides everything when we make the decision to act true to ourselves. By staying in the “village” of our minds, fearing what the next person will say about us, we will only see evidence of lack, pettiness, and limited horizons. His oft-quoted lines on staying unique are:

 

 

Walden is the collective musings of a free spirit, deeply knowledgeable about the classics, eastern religion, Native American lore, and nature itself, sketched out against a background of great physical beauty and stillness. What better vacation for the reader’s mind? The book invites you to become Thoreau’s companion, enjoying the woods and Walden Pond as he does, and delighting in his commentary on people and society.

Near the end of Walden there is the story of a beetle that emerged from an old table, resurrected after a 60-year hibernation, thanks to the heat of an urn placed on it. The story sums up Thoreau’s philosophy, in that he felt that all of us have the potential to emerge from the “wellseasoned tomb” of society, like the beetle, to enjoy the summer of life.

 

Thoreau was born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1817. After graduating from Harvard in 1837 he took a position as a schoolteacher, but objected to the required use of corporal punishment so went to work in his father’s business manufacturing lead pencils. He began his serious attention to the natural world in 183y with a voyage down the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, related in a book published ten years later. Thoreau spent two years (1841–3) as a member of Emerson’s household, and was much loved by the latter’s children.

Walden Pond was on land owned by Emerson. In the years following the experience, Thoreau worked as a land surveyor, whitewasher, and gardener, as well as lecturing and writing for magazines, including the transcendentalist journal Dial. In 184y he wrote “Civil Disobedience,” an essay provoked by opposition to the Mexican war that was to influence Martin Luther King and Gandhi. The essay “Slavery in Massachusetts” was published in 1854, the same year as Walden. Cape Cod (1865) and A Yankee in Canada (1866) followed his death in 1862. Emerson’s essay “Thoreau” marvels at his friend’s phenomenal knowledge of nature and practical skills.