Walden; Or, Life in the Woods (Dover Thrift Editions)

Writings of his prose and observations of a simplified life in the woods near Walden pond New England. We seem to miss or take for granted such things as ants and bubbles. He can look at every day occurrences such as these and transform them. A bit hard to get through his writing style, but a truly wonderful book to advance ones writing skills.

Leave ones material world behind and live.

When some people think of WALDEN, they think of a man living deep in a primeval forest, far away from civilization, learning how to become one with nature. Rather, WALDEN is about a man living only a few miles from a well-established village (Concord) attempting to learn about himself, especially in relation to the nature around him. He believes men live lives of "quiet desperation," always in a hurry, missing the best that life has to offer. To discover life's greatest offerings, which for Thoreau can only be found inside a person, never "out there," he builds a hut on the shore of Walden Pond and lives there for two years.

"I went to the wood 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," he writes. It is an "experiment" in living (as republican democracy is the "experiment" upon which the country was founded), an empirical one based on observation. He describes in loving detail the woods, the fields, the birds he hears, the pond itself ("the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature"), even village life (he goes to Concord every few days to pick up on the latest gossip). He describes the seasons as they progress and how they touch upon his inner search for meaning. Zen-like he finds inner purity and the necessity to free himself from the social and political ties that restrict his "freedom." He feels "the divine being established" inside of him every day. Finally it's time to leave (he is a man of the world after all). But he's learned 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 success." One must be true to one's own nature - that is the key message of WALDEN.

WALDEN is an American classic that combines the mystical with the practical. For those who have ever felt that "life" is some force outside of us, controlling us always, tearing apart our true natures (and who hasn't felt that at one point or another?), WALDEN is just the book to remind us that we don't have to be "a slave to material desires." Excellent in every way.

Read it when you are eighteen, and it will fire your imagination with the possibility of excellence.

Read it again at thirty-five, and it will break your heart.

Read it at fifty, and it will bring you to peace.

Don't overlook its less famous predecessor, A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS (the book he actually wrote while living at the pond). The seeds of what make WALDEN great are to be found there.

Anyone who has ever been stirred by discontent or haunted by life's unanswered questions or just intrigued by possibility, hear Walden's message. "No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof." Thoreau offers no proof, but merely sought himself, and challenges us rethink every assumption, habit, and doctrine. This concept, along with so much about Thoreau, resounds within me. As with no other writer, I can relate with him on a personal level. I, too, have had revelations in amidst simplicity and nature. Time and time again, I emerge from a time in the woods-be it two weeks backpacking in the smoky mountains or an afternoon jog beside four mile creek-only to find myself irrevocably changed. The seemingly impervious logic that formerly laid behind affections preferences, habits, hobbies, choices, even my lifestyle, had vaporized. The sun shines more brightly-and every aspect of life is illuminated differently. It can be an alarming but incredibly valuable experience, a free one as long as nature is preserved, and one that I would not trade for anything. All men would view and their time differently if only they became acquainted with nature, where time does not exist. "At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again." The choice, in so many ways, is yours.

Henry David Thoreau's _Walden_ is an account of a young man's sojourn in the New England woods, a critique of modern society (in the 1840s), and a call to action to vegetarians, libertarians, and other free thinkers. Thoreau's account is highly idiosyncratic and obscure. To be honest, it is a chore to read it through to the end. But Thoreau is wise on some subjects and, even better, he is funny. He is also very quotable, as this review demonstrates excessively.

Thoreau begins _Walden_ with a scathing depiction of the senseless, directionless activity of modern life:

"Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them."

And:

"Men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool's life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before."

Instead of working harder to produce more, Thoreau decides to want less, and leaves corrupt society behind to live at Walden Pond. There, he takes refuge in naturalism. He plants a crop of beans, he takes long walks, he observes the animals that share his woods, and he engages in some amateurish scientific speculation. Thoreau is not a hermit: he often visits the village of Concord, Massachusetts, and enjoys visiting with infrequent visitors at Walden Pond. But he finds that a little bit of society can go a long way:

"We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. ... We live thick and are in each other's way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. ... It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live."

One of my favorite passages in the book describes the author as he leaves behind the brightly lit village and walks home through the woods alone to his cabin:

"It was very pleasant, when I stayed late in town, to launch myself into the night, especially if it was dark and tempestuous, and set sail from some bright village parlor or lecture room, with a bag of rye or Indian meal upon my shoulder, for my snug harbor in the woods, having made all tight without and withdrawn under hatches with a merry crew of thoughts, leaving only my outer man at the helm, or even tying up the helm when it was plain sailing. I had many a genial thought by the cabin fire "as I sailed." I was never cast away nor distressed in any weather, though I encountered some severe storms. It is darker in the woods, even in common nights, than most suppose. I frequently had to look up at the opening between the trees above the path in order to learn my route, and, where there was no cart-path, to feel with my feet the faint track which I had worn, or steer by the known relation of particular trees which I felt with my hands, passing between two pines for instance, not more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods, invariably, in the darkest night."

After a minute description of his life at Walden, extending over the bulk of the book, Thoreau suddenly tires of that part of the narrative and decides to fast forward a bit in what I think is the funniest paragraph in the book:

"Thus was my first year's life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847."

In the last part of the book, "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience," Thoreau expresses a radical libertarianism:

"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. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, -- 'That government is best which governs not at all'; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have."

An opponent of the war with Mexico and the institution of slavery, Thoreau decides to do something about it, and lands in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax. In life as in politics, Thoreau advocates a life of deliberation followed by action:

"There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. ... To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically."