Walden

I have been meaning to write about Thoreau's Walden for some time. And because I am now anticipating a visit to the very plot of land where Thoreau built his tiny cabin and lived out his experiment of self-sufficiency and contemplation, this seems to be as good a time as any to start.

Thoreau built a small cabin by Walden's Pond and moved there on July 4th, 1845. He lived there for 26 months and journaled throughout his stay, keeping careful detailed notes about his natural surroundings and also recording his reflections on leading such a life of intentional isolation. Afterwards, he worked for nine years, composing his journal into a book which even now, more than 150 years later, embodies principles and arguments central to American thinking. Many of us like to think that we can live like Thoreau in our own cabin in the woods, secluded from civilization if we choose to. It is partly what it means to be an American.

Thoreau begins his book like this: "When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again."

He lived his own experiment: he acted out the idea that being immersed in nature and living with the barest essentials of daily living (growing one's own food and wearing the simplest of clothes) would bring him closer to experiencing the transcendental divinity that resides in nature and our own human souls.