“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.”
“I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and without an end.”
“I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up.”
This is one of those books that had been on my list to read for years, and, as commonly happens with the classics, some new book usually comes along to topple an older one down the priority order. Yet, I couldn’t escape the importance of reading “Walden”; after all, in Henry David Thoreau’s words, “For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man?” So I finally stopped putting it off and jumped into what turned out be somewhat of a tough read—but well worth it.
Documenting the fruits of his choice to spend a year living next to Walden Pond, Thoreau spends much of “Walden” railing against possessions, the futility of farming (“Men have become the tools of their tools.”) and the self-enslavery caused by purchasing dwellings when “savages” make dwellings that are not only just as comfortable (“I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.”), but can be owned outright immediately. He mocks fashion (“Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes … It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so diligently follow.”) and discusses the disparity between rich and poor, pointing out the irony that the workers who create the palaces and the triumphs of architecture themselves live in huts and squalor. He asks us what might be possible if we were able to content ourselves with less, instead of always enslaving ourselves in the pursuit of more?
“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at …”
“Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind.”
By stressing the importance of becoming closer to nature, Thoreau shows the ridiculousness of excessive education that “plays” at life in lieu of practical experience (“How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?”). He repeatedly brings up the merits of finding companionship within our own solitude, getting lost in a book, emphasizing only that which is real and striving for simplicity (“ ... For my greatest skill has been to want but little …”) above any and all else. He writes much in the spirit of “To thine own self be true”; hence, “What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.” and “Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.”
The first part of the book is much more philosophical, while the second half of the book seems to dwell (almost maddeningly so) on botany, nature, and seemingly inconsequential experiments and measurements. At one point, Thoreau details how he spent hours and days looking at ice and bubbles within the ice and such—to the point where a reader might question whether the solitude was actually causing him to go crazy. This question gains momentum when you consider that he fantasizes about wars between rival ant gangs, but he recovers when he muses beautifully about children planting lilacs, being outlived by the flowers, and then having the lilacs go on to tell the story.
Many have credited “Walden” with being the first conservation book, an ode to the importance of nature and the outdoors. Indeed, he decries the “sport” of hunting and even killing other beings for food:
“No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature, which holds its life by the same tenure that he does. The hare in its extremity cries like a child.”
In addition to his effort to protect wildlife, he goes on to talk about the importance of communing with the great wide open and maintaining that connection to the land:
“We need the tonic of wilderness … At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of Nature.”
“ … For I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher’s desk.”
Thoreau is the author of many of my favorite quotes, particularly “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Admittedly, some of “Walden” reads like a love story to artists -- “A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love.” From that standpoint, I reacted strongly to his words about the profession of writing: “But the writer … speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him … A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself.”
In many ways, his work is about the unquenchable drive for us to find the keys to life in someone else’s truth -- to discover something forgotten, something someone has already figured out, documented and then lost. In a way, some of us approach reading in the manner of expecting that if we read enough books, life may eventually make some sense to us. Thoreau asks, “How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book? The books exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at-present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.”
So what did Thoreau truly learn in his escape into the woods and the lake? It depends on how you choose to read “Walden” and the life experiences you elect to call upon in deciding which aspects of the piece to highlight. After all, it’s part autobiography, part environmental essay, part rejection of society, part motivational book, part Luddite thesis, part celebration of life, part zoology textbook … and many other things as well. Even Thoreau himself seemed to recognize that he learned too much to share, distilling it down to a more general conclusion:
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours …
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
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