I borrowed a copy of Walden from my dad’s vast library when I was about 11 years old, I had always been interested in nature and the outdoors but Thoreau’s Walden turned out to be the perfect book at the perfect moment in time, it opened my then young eyes to a new world of possibilities, I like to think it was fate.

Walden affected me in many ways, it taught me to look at nature in a new way that allowed me to discover the infinite depth and the vast dimension of it’s reach. But the most important affect Walden had on me was that it filled me with a desire for self-sufficiency and the need for a certain degree of independence in my life. I have often wondered over the years what life might have been like in the 18th and 19th centuries, The idea that a person could stake a claim on a parcel of land in some uncharted territory and make of it what he could, be it a farm, a ranch or a mountain retreat greatly appealed to me. And I believe that the doers of the world would have done very well in such an environment! I’m sure life was far from easy for those who set out to conquer their own destinies, and in great part such a scenario would prove the true measure of a person, but the rewards would have been equally fulfilling (or disappointing, be it as it may.) For many of us, seeing the fruits of our own labor is immensely satisfying, and living a life unhindered by the shackles of social expectations (town-life or keeping up with the Jones’s,  if you will) to labor toward your dream must have been extremely rewarding for Thoreau. This little tidbit of information should give you a peek into one of the many reasons I decided to ride a bicycle across America (the long way no less!)

Henry David Thoreau was thought of as an oddball in his time, the reasons behind his living in the woods alone for two years to ponder what he called the essentials of life escaped many of his contemporaries. I’m sure many people today have an equally hard time understanding his motives and aim. For a few of us however the reasons are crystal clear and we will forever be in his debt. That I deeply admire Thoreau is no secret, but alas, I have no desire to imitate his life or live as he lived, I have my own life and that is challenge and reward enough… But to taste the freedom, if only for a short while, of being your own person, living life on your own terms, in your own time and at your own pace, of satisfying your whims as they strike you and discovering what matters most in life to one's self holds tremendous appeal to me. I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to taste this freedom, if only a short time! Maine to Washington here I come!

I heartily accept the motto,
"That government is best which governs least";
 and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.

Henry David Thoreau
from the essay "Civil Disobedience"

On Reading Thoreau

The following excerpt is from: http://www.kenkifer.com/Thoreau/index.htm

Nonetheless, Walden is a difficult book to read for three reasons: First, it was written by a gifted writer who uses surgically precise language, extended, allegorical metaphors, long and complex paragraphs and sentences, and vivid, detailed, and insightful descriptions. Thoreau does not hestitate to use metaphors, allusions, understatement, hyperbole, personification, irony, satire, metonymy, synecdoche, and oxymorons, and he can shift from a scientific to a transcendental point of view in mid-sentence. Second, its logic is based on a different understanding of life, quite contrary to what most people would call common sense. Ironically, this logic is based on what most people say they believe. Thoreau, recognizing this, fills Walden with sarcasm, pardoxes, and double entendres (double meanings). He likes to tease, challenge, and even fool his readers. And third, quite often any words would be inadequate at expressing many of Thoreau's non-verbal insights into truth. Thoreau must use non-literal language to express these notions, and the reader must reach out to understand.

Perhaps because of this, Walden tends to be treated as either a whimsical, idiosyncratic literary text (that is, a purely personal account with difficult language) or as a journal full of Nature writings for those who love to read about little furry animals. But it really is neither. The purpose of Walden is to argue for, explain, and demonstrate Thoreau's philosophy of life, a philosophy that is practical and poetic, personal and universal. Thoreau developed his own sense of economics, an understanding that differs greatly from that of Karl Marx (communism) or that of Adam Smith (capitalism), an understanding that can free an individual from a life of toil and worry. But in addition, he developed a purpose for life, something that the communists and capitalists overlooked, a purpose more important than economics. Rather than seeing the acquisition of wealth as the goal for human existence, Thoreau saw the goal of life to be an exploration of the mind and of the magnificent world around us.

A Thoreauvian lifestyle is almost exactly the opposite of the consumer treadmill that most people find themselves running on today (Thoreau asked, "Does Wisdom work on a tread-mill?"). A Thoreauvian lifestyle is poor in all the gewgaws most people accumulate and is rich in time, opportunity, and vast quantities of invisible wealth which can not be bought, sold, or stolen.

I decided to write these pages for two reasons. First, I am aware from teaching that many American and international students have a great deal of difficulty understanding Thoreau, so I wanted to help. I cannot explain everything for you, but I can point you in the right direction. And second, I sincerely believe that Thoreau put his finger on the primary weaknesses of the American culture. I feel that unless we resolve these problems that future generations will suffer heavily. A Thoreauvian lifestyle not only can make our individual lives more worthwhile but it can also help preserve our planet.

 You can find much more info on Thoreau and cycling on Ken's website.

Thoreau and the Environment

Henry Thoreau liked to get his feet muddy; all nature was a tonic for him. Nearly every day, year round, he was out walking—exploring and studying every nook and cranny in Walden Woods, Estabrook Woods, and the rest of Concord, and recording in his journals in vivid detail what he heard and smelled and saw. On warm Sunday mornings, he waded up to his shoulders in the Concord River while his neighbors sat high and dry in their church pews. While his neighbors tilled their fields, he climbed the tallest white pine trees he could find in a search for bird nests, pine cones, or a fine view. Thoreau's study of how plant seeds are spread led to his theory of forest succession, accepted today as a key contribution to the field.

       But beyond his superb talents as observer and naturalist lay Thoreau's passion to explore deeper meanings in nature. "The hen-hawk (red-tailed hawk) and the pine are friends," he wrote in his journal in 1859. "What we call wildness is a civilization other than our own." Writing in his classic book, Walden, about the ties between people and nature, he says, "Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it." And he adds, "We need the tonic of wildness,—to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen [American coot] lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground."

       As his understanding and intimacy with the world of nature developed, Thoreau became one of its earliest champions. Watching Concord stripped of its forests for farming and fuel-wood, and seeing the village expand into the countryside, Thoreau looked to the future and raised new possibilities. "Each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of 500 or a thousand acres, where a stick should never be cut for fuel, a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation," he wrote.

       Largely overlooked during his lifetime, he is now praised as one of the nation's most powerful voices for the natural environment. "In wildness is the preservation of the world," he wrote, and with such statements helped shape the thinking of modern day environmentalists. Today countless people point to Thoreau as the father of this century's environmental movement.

      Thoreau is an American original—an amazing mix of land surveyor and pencil designer, naturalist and social reformer, poet and philosopher. But Thoreau himself had something perhaps more revealing to tell us about himself and his work. "My profession is always to be on the alert to find God in Nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas, of nature." In a river, he found the flow of eternity; climbing a mountain he felt his spirit move closer to God. "I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows." It was as though he could see through Nature to a glimpse of the divine. What might sound to us like a contradiction made perfect sense to him: "Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads." Exalting his own small world of Walden Pond and Walden Woods and the Concord countryside, Henry Thoreau exalted nature for all of us everywhere.

—Helen M. Bowdoin

Thoreau, The Man

The American writer, thinker, and naturalist Henry D. Thoreau was born to John and Cynthia (Dunbar) Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts, on 12 July 1817. In 1828, after a few years in Concord's grammar school, Thoreau began attending the Concord Academy, and from 1833 to 1837 he attended Harvard College.

       After graduating from Harvard Thoreau secured a teaching position at the Concord Center School (public), but he resigned after just two weeks because he refused to use corporal punishment on his charges. From 1838 until 1841 he and his older brother John, Jr., taught a private school in Concord, and in 1838 the two brothers went on a two week boating excursion that Thoreau later memorialized in his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, published in 1849. In 1840 Thoreau published poems and essays in the transcendentalist periodical, The Dial, and from 1841 to 1843 he lived with the famous author and lecturer Ralph Waldo Emerson and Emerson's family (Waldo's wife, Lidian, and two children) in Concord. In 1842 John, Jr., died a painful death of lockjaw in Thoreau's arms, and the following year Thoreau moved to Staten Island, New York, to tutor William Emerson's children and to attempt to break into the New York literary market. Having returned to Concord, in 1844 Thoreau and Edward Hoar, a companion, accidentally set fire to some woods in Concord when trying to prepare a fish chowder near Fair Haven Pond on a windy day.
       From 1845 to 1847 Thoreau lived in a small house that he built himself on the shore of Walden Pond, a mile and a half south of Concord Center. In 1846, while still at the pond, he climbed to the summit of Mt. Katahdin while on a visit to the Maine woods and spent one night in jail for refusing to pay his poll tax. He later worked these experiences into lectures that were later still published as the "Ktaadn" chapter of The Maine Woods and the famous, influential essay "Civil Disobedience."

       After leaving the house at the pond Thoreau stayed with the Emerson family again while Ralph Waldo Emerson lectured in England. Thoreau returned to his parents's home in 1848 and continued living with them as a boarder for the remainder of his life. At about this time he began the routine of morning and evening study and writing, and afternoon walks that were the foundation upon which he may be said to have built his creative life.

        Thoreau made the first of four trips to Cape Cod in 1849, and he later delivered lectures about his experiences that were posthumously published as Cape Cod. The following year he traveled to Quebec and wrote up that experience in a lecture titled "An Excursion to Canada," partially published in 1853 as A Yankee in Canada. His famous book Walden; or, Life in the Woods (later shortened at his request to Walden) was published in 1854, and in that same year he delivered his lecture-essay "Slavery in Massachusetts" at an Independence Day meeting of the American Anti-Slavery Society.

        In 1856 Thoreau traveled to Perth Amboy, New Jersey, to survey a large estate and deliver three lectures. While there he visited Walt Whitman in nearby Brooklyn. In 1857 and 1858 he visited Cape Cod, the woods of Maine, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire; and in the latter year he published what was to become the second chapter of The Maine Woods, his essay "Chesuncook." In 1859 his father died, and as a result he had to begin assuming more responsibility of the family's plumbago business. In October of that year the abolitionist Capt. John Brown raided the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, and Thoreau spoke mightily in defense of Brown's character—the first person in America to do so. His essay "A Plea for Capt. John Brown" was published and widely circulated in his friend, the famous editor Horace Greeley's newspaper, The New-York Tribune. The following year Thoreau lectured to his townsmen on "The Succession of Forest Trees," and his lecture was shortly afterward published and republished, receiving wider circulation than any of Thoreau's other writings during his lifetime and cementing his reputation as a naturalist.

       While counting tree rings on 3 December 1860 Thoreau contracted a cold that quickly worsened into bronchitis. His lungs had long been tubercular, and Thoreau was housebound for many weeks. During the summer of 1861 he traveled to Minnesota in a vain effort to recover his health. Arriving back home he began putting his affairs in order and began preparing for publication many of his late lectures. He died of tuberculosis at his mother's home on Main Street in Concord on 6 May 1862, aged 44 years. He is buried in his family's plot near the graves of his friends Hawthorne, Alcott, Emerson, and Channing on Author's Ridge in Concord's Sleepy Hollow Cemetery.

Selected Thoreau Links