Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Walden

Henry David Thoreau 

Published 1854    

The Well-Educated Mind Reading Challenge [Biographies] 

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This book was one of the most anticipated books on the entire Well-Educated Mind reading list.  It was like preparing for a visit from a good, old friend.  I was a little apprehensive though that I may not love Walden as I originally did over twenty years ago, since so much of my worldview has changed; however, I can confirm that Walden and I are indeed still friends.

When I studied architecture in college, my professor had us read Walden and "Civil Disobedience." He was a libertarian-type, and I can understand why he encouraged us to study Thoreau's life and principles.  Thoreau was self-sufficient, self-reliant, independent, and a lover of liberty.  He was also a naturalist, surveyor, explorer, philosopher, poet, and author.  He practiced a life of simplicity.  

If you are curious, Walden is a short collection of experiences written by the author about his two-year experiment, living in the woods near Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts.  He divided his principles, opinions, and findings into sections: economy, reading, sounds, solitude, visitors, higher laws, brute neighbors, winter animals, the pond in winter, and spring, to name a few of my favorites.  His purpose for going to Walden Pond was this:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Here are a few of my favorite common sense truths about Thoreau, in my own words:

• He foresaw the booming industrial revolution as a threat to nature - which he understood to be an enhancement to one's life.
• He built his own home and grew his own food, and expressed rationally a need for every man to build his own home and grow his own food, instead of paying someone else to do it.  
• He was simple and plain, and had few material goods, and preferred to live that way. 
• He believed ornaments, decorations, and fashion for houses and people were foolishness.
• He thought man worked too hard, too long, and had nothing to show for it.
• He knew man lived well beyond his means.
• He felt charity, doing-good, and philanthropy were overrated and done out of selfishness.
• He loved reading great books.
• He was a realist.

Some of my favorite quotes:

On ECONOMY    Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?  We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.

The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem itself.

This spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet.

On WHERE I LIVED:  Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.   (Thoreau regarded the morning as the best time of day.  It is!)

On READING:  The adventurous student will always study the classics.  For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? 

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem.

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. 

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

On SOLITUDE:  I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.  To be in company, even with the best, is wearisome and dissipating.  I love to be alone.  I never found the companion that was so companionable than solitude.

When I was a college girl, except for the vegan diet (Thoreau’s preference), I wanted to live like Thoreau.  I wanted a simple life (and I still do!).  At one time, I was so inspired by Thoreau's ideas, I wanted to move to Alaska and live in an igloo; that is how much I took living simply to heart.  (By the way, I would have returned home to sunny California quicker than you could say "iceberg" because I am not that adventurous.  I don't even like camping in a tent in the local mountains.) 

MY CONCLUSION:    Honestly, I had two opposing voices.  The first was my adult-ish, motherly, Christian-worldview voice, with husband, five kids, and the burdens of this life that scolded Thoreau and wanted him to mature and be adult-ish, too.  "This is sheer idleness, Thoreau!  Real men work.  Come in from the woods and contribute to society.  How can you 'love thy neighbor' and ‘serve others’ while being separated from the world?  Stop wandering off, writing poetry, pondering nature, and doing the bare minimum to get by." That was my first voice.

My second voice was the younger girl of a simpler time, screaming, “TAKE ME WITH YOU!!!!”  That was the voice that was starring and underlining and writing all over again these important words of Thoreau's thoughts that are still alive in me.  (Yeah, things changed once I got married and had kids; peace and serenity are a long way off in this crowded little house of seven, Plus, I live in a desert.)  Nonetheless, I am still free to imagine and create my own Walden Pond right here in my own little world.  Like Thoreau said, "Live the life you imagined."       

In the words of Thoreau, “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!”