Within the covers of certain books words come together to create stories that are mirrors of ordinary lives. On the pages of such books we meet matchmaking mothers, miserly old men, innocent governesses and righteous shepherds. On the pages of certain other books, penned by different hands, different words come together to open a door into an idyllic paradise. These books invite us to disappear into the woods for a while. To live in a single-room wooden hut, to go to bed when the sun sets and wake up when it rises. To lay on the sandy shore of a pond glittering with crystal clear water and listen to the birds singing an opera in the trees and the soft footsteps of the deer on the green grass growing nearby. Ah, the bliss of tranquility.
Such a book is Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Walden.’ At the age of 27, having graduated from Harvard, taken up a job as a teacher and resigned after only two weeks, Thoreau accomplished a dream all of us nurture at some point in our lives. In 1845 he went to live in the woods near Concord, Massachusetts, building a single-room cabin on the land owned by his friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson. “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,” was how he explained his unusual decision. He also added, “I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life.”
Thoreau lived in his cabin in the forest for two years, two months and two days, later recording the experience as the journal of a single year onto the pages of ‘Walden.’ Echoing Indian spiritual writings, he describes why he chose a frugal lifestyle. He argues, we clutter ourselves with possessions and responsibilities to the extent that we prevent ourselves from enjoying what we have. Rejecting the work ethic that’s a central component of the American Dream, he says “we have become the slave-drivers of ourselves”, and writes of the “seemingly wealthy, but most impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.” Thoreau’s views apply to the 21st century too. Productivity and economic growth are often seen as intrinsically desirable, but sadly, at what cost?
As critic Linda Newberry writes, Thoreau records details of his diet and plant husbandry, claiming that only thirty or forty days’ work in a year were needed to support himself. Although not strictly vegetarian ( he regularly caught and ate fish from the lake) he wrote, “I believe that every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food.” In hunting and fishing, he finds “something essentially unclean about this diet and all flesh ... when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially ... It cost more than it came to.” Clearly his vision of the future is made of a world where the human race no longer eats animals.
 Replica of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond |
Apart from descriptions of a spartan existence, Thoreau also describes the natural surroundings around him. Some of the most beautiful writing in Walden focuses on the waters of the lake at various times of year, and the birds and animals who inhabit it. Thoreau’s deep interest in the natural world led to the making of detailed observations of what we now call ecosystems - long before ecology became a distinct scientific discipline. In particular, he was interested in how forestry regenerates after individual trees have been destroyed by fire.
In the Chapter titled Ponds Thoreau provides as near to a concise summary description of Walden Pond as can be found in the book:
“The scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and, though very beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, nor can it much concern one who has not long frequented it or lived by its shore; yet this pond is so remarkable for its depth and purity as to merit a particular description. It is a clear and deep green well, a half a mile long and a mile and three quarters` in circumference, and contains about sixty one and a half acres, a perennial spring in the midst of pine and oak woods, without any visible inlet or outlet except by the clouds and evaporation.”
By Thoreau’s own admission, Walden was a place of understated beauty and not what we would now refer to as iconic or epic beauty. It was very humble in its origin. After all, Walden was only a couple of miles away from Concord Massachusetts. And Concord, they say, was not a remote spot even by the standards of the Nineteenth century. But to Thoreau, Walden Pond was extraordinary in several ways. The most important was its depth and purity. Thoreau mentions that the shoreline drops so suddenly that one could take one step into the water and already lose touch with the ground and that no one knew for certain the absolute depth of the pond. The water is so pure that in the right light one’s ability to see into the water appears almost unlimited.
Capturing the essence of mindfulness, Thoreau writes, “I have been anxious to improve in the nick of time ... to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment.”
It should be noted, however, ‘Walden’ was not and is not to everyone’s taste. Thoreau has been derided for merely playing at self-sufficiency, regularly returning to his mother with his laundry; Bill Bryson dismissed him as “inestimably priggish and tiresome”. E.B. White, quoted by John Updike in a new introduction, was an admirer, but conceded that Thoreau sometimes wrote as if “all his readers were male, unmarried, and well-connected”. (He also assumes, they are scholars in Western Classics - the text is liberally scattered with allusions to Greek and Roman mythology.) The tone can be preachy, and he is given to making the same point several times, as in the chapter on Economy. Thoreau also can be patronising, as in his famous pronouncement that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” To a modern ear he is misogynistic, rarely mentioning women.
It is also said the land he lived on, which belonged to Emerson was only a mile away from Emerson’s residence and he would often dine at his friend’s dinner table. He was within hearing distance of the bells of Concord. He also did odd jobs for his mom for doing his laundry and for other people in Concord in exchange for meals. So Thoreau did not accomplish the status of a complete hermit at Walden. Clearly, he wasn’t so completely self-sufficient as many think.
Nonetheless, he makes us take a moment and really think about what is important. He brings to light those things we have pushed way down in our conscience. Once we get a glimpse of his life in Walden we are inspired to connect with the natural surroundings around us, to fall in love again with a vision of a more perfect world, and to do good, honest work that is in line with the values of all religions on earth.
To end with two of my favourite Thoreau quotes:“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.” And, “Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”
