I’ve enjoyed reading Walden many times over the years, and this latest reading did not disappoint. Thoreau’s narrator is an exuberant man, a lover of nature, optimistic about the potential of humans for discovering the higher truths of their own natures if they will only make that their priority, instead of encumbering themselves with the likes of acreage and barns, stores and railroads. I don’t think that Thoreau meant Walden as a “how-to manual”; he is, instead, challenging his readers to examine their own values and prioritize what Thoreau finds truly important: the exploration in their own way of their own individual natures and unique potential.

Thoreau wrote Walden while living alone on the shore of Walden Pond in the woods in Concord, Mass. in a house he had built for himself and living solely (so he said) by the work of his hands. He identifies his intended audience as his fellow New Englanders, his Concord neighbors: “I would fain say something, not so much concerning the Chinese and Sandwich Islanders, as you who read these pages who are said to live in New England….” Thoreau shares with readers his various observations of and reflections on Nature, human nature included, in chapters loosely following the course of a year, from summer through the following spring. In his role as narrator, Thoreau becomes in turn poet, philosopher, and scientific observer. He is well educated and multilingual. His writing is a joy to read (for this reader, anyway).

His prose is peppered with allusions to classical writings, including those of the ancient Hindus. One of my favorite classical allusions is his description in epic terms of a battle between black ants and red ants, taking place on his window sill, in language reminiscent of Homer—very comical mock epic. He makes use of other classical rhetorical devices: balanced and antithetical sentences, exaggeration, and understatement. This and his liberal wordplay, especially puns, double-entendres, and paradoxes, contribute to Thoreau’s witty style.

His descriptions of Nature, especially of his beloved Walden, are often wonderfully evocative. Here is a passage describing early morning at the pond:

“For the first week, whenever I looked on the pond it impressed me like a tarn high up on the side of a mountain, its bottom far above the surface of other lakes, and, as the sun arose, I saw it throwing off its nightly clothing of mist, and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the breaking up of some nocturnal conventicle.”

I remember this description every time I see such a scene. Thoreau also includes many passages of more scientific description of Walden and surrounding ponds, taking measurements and offering explanations of different aspects of pond life. The enormous amount of detail he includes in these passages conveys his intense fascination with the ponds and just might, on occasion, send a less fascinated reader to sleep.

Even though I cannot share this faith, I enjoy and am always encouraged by Thoreau’s faith in Nature and in the ability of humankind to discern and live out their individual “higher” natures. This passage, found in the concluding chapter, expresses his faith in words often quoted:

“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. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. 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.”

I know that Walden will not please everyone, but its boundless enthusiasm and positive confidence please me immensely. If you are a lover of nature and believe that spending time alone in woods or mountains can be nourishing and revealing, you should try Walden. It might please you, too. ( )

Only read Walden and Civil Disobedience. Will update if/when I read the other writings in the collection. ( )

On or about July 23, 1846 Henry David Thoreau was detained in Concord for nonpayment of the poll tax, and he spent the night in the Concord Jail. He described his experience in jail thus: "The rooms were whitewashed once a month; and this one, at least, was the whitest, most simply furnished, and probably the neatest apartment in the town." He described his fellow inmate ("room-mate") as someone accused of "burning a barn" who had been incarcerated for three months waiting for trial. He was "quite domesticated and contented, since he got his board for nothing, and thought that he was well treated." They each had a window of their own to look out and Thoreau noted that "It was like traveling to a far country, such as I had never expected to behold, to lie there for one night." The next day some anonymous person paid the tax and Thoreau was once again a free man.

The episode would be little noted but for the essay that Thoreau proceeded to write, an essay that would become one of the great Western statements on the importance of conscience. The essay is now known as "On Civil Disobedience" although its original title was "Resistance to Civil Government". It is short, less than twenty pages in the edition I read, but it lays out Thoreau's thoughts on the nature of Government: where it gets its authority, when it must be resisted, and more.

He begins the essay with the motto, "That government is best which governs least;" and he immediately makes a case for a government that "governs not at all", at least when men are "prepared for it". He will go on to identify three objections that he, and others, have against the government: namely, maintaining a standing army, the mistreatment of native Americans, and the institution of slavery. He claims that the American government has lost some of its integrity and is not worthy of our respect. However he quickly notes that he is not a "no-government man", because "to speak practically and as a citizen" he does not want no-government but merely "better government". That is he wants a government he can respect.

How does he recommend that he and his friends should resist a government that has lost his respect? He does not speak of a "call to arms". He is not a man like John Brown would become in less than a decade; rather he lays out a pacifist strategy of civil resistance to the government. He describes this resistance in several ways throughout the essay, including: refusing allegiance to the state of Massachusetts; receding from government (withdrawing his association with it); resigning your office (for those who have been appointed); refusing to pay taxes; and refusing to serve in an "unjust war" (the Mexican-American war had begun in April, 1846 and would continue until February, 1848).

To a great extent the essay is both anti-war and anti-slavery. Thoreau references sources as disparate as Confucius and the Bible to under gird his arguments. Although he makes an effort to sound practical at times his primary tendency is one of dissociation from the current American government. His rhetoric demonstrates a moral absolutism that is reminiscent of the speeches of William Lloyd Garrison. He is a genuine radical as he makes statements like: "If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself . . . The people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people." He castigates as "the most serious obstacle to reform" those liberals who personally disapprove of slavery or the war yet still support the government. Moreover, he observes that "action from principle . . . is essentially revolutionary". His personal episode in jail is one small example of the consequences of his adherence to principle. "Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison."

These are strong words that suggest why the ideas presented in this essay have continued to have a profound effect until our own day. It is why the essay has influenced subsequent thinkers like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and others. It is why this essay is considered one of the "great essays" of Thoreau's era and our own. ( )

Walden is an American masterpiece: a story of renewal, and a statement of the individual's responsibility to himself, to society and to the world at large. The seasonal cycle of the book sort of drills down into contemplation, so that you are eased into winter, and deeper thought.

Whenever I pick up Walden, I always expect an ecstatic tract a la Muir, and forget how humorous Thoreau is. He uses awful puns, he jibes at his own lack of commercial success, he makes fun of his fellow Concordians. What a wonderful dinner guest he must have been — stubborn and entertaining. ( )

I was going to say something silly and Garden State-y about how Walden changed my life, but am rewording because the experience of reading this book was more like...confirmation. Which is to say, I've chosen a certain way to live that I believe is the right one for me, and reading Walden was like being told, "That's right, that's what you need to do. Keep on keeping on, you're heading in the right direction." Except that the life Thoreau writes about is not directional in the least. But you get what I mean.

"So that was a big deal too..." ( )