I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
When Henry David Thoreau moved to Walden Pond in 1845, a mile-and-a-half from the city of Concord in a tidy cabin crafted from salvaged materials, he was Harvard-educated and privileged enough to afford a two-year staycation. By farming, fishing, and living minimalistically, he was at leisure to revel in nature and ponder—penning wisdom for any who might care to be enlightened, which was not many people at first. His wisdom reads, at times, like Franklin’s aphorisms from Poor Richard’s Almanac a hundred years earlier, albeit with greater elucidation. To wit:
It is never too late to give up our prejudices.
Goodness is the only investment that never fails.
Time is but the stream I go fishing in.
I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.
I never found the companion that was as companionable as solitude.
Or did he? Solitude means different things to different people. In my last review, The Stranger in the Woods, we met a hermit living in frozen isolation for twenty-seven years, terrified lest he encounter other humans. Thoreau, on the other hand, seemed always to be entertaining neighbors or trekking to town. No wonder he was never cast away nor distressed in any weather. He was living the American dream: a lake house convenient to civilization. If I sound dubious, it may be that I am. If I sound jealous, I definitely am. I want a tiny house flooded with sunlight, kaleidoscopic autumns, dark and hooty nights, a window on life beneath the transparent ice, wild critters tamed to my presence, and joyous springs jumping from hummock to hummock. Who wouldn’t? No wonder this book became a classic.
Things do not change; Thoreau said. We change. That’s what these transcendental musings can do for the modern reader, help us feel the change that peace brings. Read it once for content and again for feeling. Take notes. But first, watch Bob Vila’s tour of the historic site where Thoreau lived, complete with an educational “author interview” at his recreated cabin.