Move to Walden Pond of Henry David Thoreau.
One of My All-Time Favorite Americans was Henry David Thoreau,
By early 1845 he felt more restless than ever, until he decided to take up an idea of a Harvard classmate who had once built a waterside hut in which one could read and contemplate. In the spring Thoreau picked a spot by Walden Pond, a small glacial lake located 2 miles (3 km) south of Concord on land Emerson owned.
Cabin at Walden Pond
Early in the spring of 1845, Thoreau, then 27 years old, began to chop down tall pines with which to build the foundations of his home on the shores of Walden Pond. From the outset the move gave him profound satisfaction. Once settled, he restricted his diet for the most part to the fruits and vegetables he found growing wild and the beans he planted.
When he wasn’t busy weeding his bean rows and trying to protect them from hungry groundhogs or occupied with fishing, swimming, or rowing, he spent long hours observing and recording the local flora and fauna, reading, and writing A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849). He also made entries in his journals, which he later polished and included in Walden. Much time, too, was spent in meditation.
Henry David Thoreau: Walden Pond cabin
Out of such activity and thought came Walden, a series of 18 essays describing
Thoreau’s experiment in basic living and his effort to set his time free for leisure.
Several of the essays provide his original perspective on the meaning of work and leisure and describe his experiment in living as simply and self-sufficient as possible, while in others Thoreau described the various realities of life at Walden Pond: his intimacy with the small animals he came in contact with; the sounds, smells, and look of woods and water at various seasons; the music of wind in telegraph wires—in short, the felicities
of learning how to fulfill his desire to live as simply and self-sufficient as possible.
The physical act of living day by day at Walden Pond is what gives the book authority, while Thoreau’s command of a clear, straightforward, elegant style helped raise it to
the level of a literary classic. Thoreau stayed for two years at Walden Pond (1845–47).
In the summer of 1847 Emerson invited him to stay with his wife and children again,
while Emerson himself went to Europe. Thoreau accepted, and in September1847
he left his cabin forever.
Midway in his Walden sojourn
Thoreau had spent a night in jail. On an evening in July 1846 he encountered
Sam Staples, the constable and tax gatherer. Staples asked him amiably to pay his poll tax, which Thoreau had omitted paying for several years. He declined, and Staples locked him up. The next morning a still-unidentified lady, perhaps his aunt, Maria, paid the tax.
Thoreau reluctantly emerged, did an errand, and then went to collect huckleberries.
A single night, he decided, was enough to make his point that he could not support a government that endorsed slavery and waged an imperialist war against Mexico.
His defense of the private, individual conscience against the expediency of the majority found expression in his most famous essay, “Civil Disobedience,” was first published in May 1849 under the title “Resistance to Civil Government.”
The essay received little attention until the 20th century, when it found an eager audience with the American civil rights movement. To many, its message still sounds timely: there
is a higher law than the civil one, and the higher law must be followed even if a penalty ensues. So does its consequence: “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly,
the true place for a just man is also a prison.”
Later life and works.
When Thoreau left Walden, he passed the peak of his career, and his life lost much of
its illumination. Slowly his Transcendentalism drained away as he became a surveyor in order to support himself. He collected botanical specimens for himself and reptilian ones for Harvard, jotting down their descriptions in his journal. He established himself in his neighbourhood as a sound man with rod and transit, and he spent most of his time in the family business; after his father’s death he took it over entirely.
Thoreau made excursions to the Maine woods, to Cape Cod, and to Canada, using his experiences on the trips as raw material for three series of magazine articles: “Ktaadn
[sic] and the Maine Woods,” in The Union Magazine (1848); “Excursion to Canada,” in Putnam’s Monthly (1853); and “Cape Cod,” in Putnam’s (1855). These works present Thoreau’s zest for outdoor adventure and his appreciation of the natural environment
that had for so long sustained his own spirit.
Thoreau’s two famous symbolic actions,
His two years in the cabin at Walden Pond and his night in jail for civil disobedience, represent his personal enactment of the doctrines of New England Transcendentalism
as expressed by his friend and associate Emerson, among others.
In his writings Thoreau was concerned primarily with the possibilities for human culture provided by the American natural environment.
He adapted ideas garnered from the then-current Romantic literatures in order to extend American libertarianism and individualism beyond the political and religious spheres to those of social and personal life. “The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why,” Thoreau asked in Walden, where his example was the answer, “should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?”
In a commercial, conservative, expedient society that was rapidly becoming urban
and industrial, he upheld the right to self-culture, to an individual life shaped by inner principle. He demanded for all the freedom to follow unique lifestyles, to make poems of their lives and living itself an art. In a restless, expanding society dedicated to practical action, he demonstrated the uses and values of leisure, contemplation, and a harmonious appreciation of and coexistence with nature.
Thoreau established the tradition of nature writing later developed by the Americans.
John Burroughs and John Muir, and his pioneer study of the human uses of nature profoundly influenced such conservationists and regional planners as Benton MacKaye and Lewis Mumford. More important, Thoreau’s life, so fully expressed in his writing, has had a pervasive influence because it was an example of moral heroism and an example of the continuing search for a spiritual dimension in American life.
As Thoreau became less of a Transcendentalist.
He became more of an activist—above all, a dedicated abolitionist. As much as anyone in Concord, he helped to speed people fleeing slavery north on the Underground Railroad. He lectured and wrote against slavery; “Slavery in Massachusetts,” a lecture delivered in 1854, was his hardest indictment. In the abolitionist John Brown he found a father figure beside whom Emerson paled; the fiery old fanatic became his ideal. By now Thoreau was in poor health, and, when Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry failed and he was hanged, Thoreau suffered a psychic shock that probably hastened his own death. He died, apparently of tuberculosis, in 1862.
Legacy of Henry David Thoreau
In terms of material success, Thoreau lived a life of repeated failures. He had to pay for
the printing of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; when it sold a mere 220 copies, the publishers dumped the remaining 700 on his doorstep. Walden (the second and last of his books published during his lifetime) fared better but still took five years to sell 2,000 copies. And yet Thoreau is regarded as both a classic American writer and a cultural hero of his country. This opinion of his greatness stems from the power of his principal ideas and the lucid, provocative writing with which he expressed them.
Thoreau and the Environment Snow-laden pitch pines
(Photographer: Herbert Gleason, from The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, 1906)
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.
Beyond Walden: What Henry David Thoreau Teaches Us About Nature and Connection
April 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Organizations around the world have commemorated the occasion by participating in the global Earth Optimism movement — an initiative spearheaded by the Smithsonian to “turn the conservation conversation from doom and gloom to optimism and opportunity”.
Throughout 2020, the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and our partners are joining the movement by sharing conservation success stories from and made possible by the BHL collection. Follow our blog for conservation stories — past and present — and visit our website for more information and to explore our Earth Optimism book collection.
Thoreau the writer. Thoreau the philosopher.
Thoreau the naturalist. Thoreau the citizen.
———————
The myriad of Henry David Thoreau’s titles demonstrates the fusion of interests
that propelled his path toward becoming one of the key naturalist figures in history.
Classic works like Walden and Civil Disobedience brought Thoreau literary renown
as he proclaimed the philosophies of Transcendentalism and environmentalism.
As a naturalist, his records of field specimens amassed in journals both while living at Walden Pond and long after. Though praised for his place in the American literary canon, he also made significant contributions to the scientific community. His field notes and data are now helping scientists learn more about species’ resilience, the effects of climate change, and the historical landscape of New England.
Thoreau’s identities are interdependent.
Without his grace with words, little attention might be devoted to his findings and philosophies. If he had not had a passion for nature and study, he might never have gone to Walden Pond in the first place. Yet, it is not simply living and surviving at Walden Pond that makes Thoreau a great naturalist. His immersion in nature throughout New England and the relationships he formed with members of the Penobscot Nation in Maine sculpted his understanding and passion for the ecosystem.
A cove at Walden Pond where Thoreau lived 1845-1847.
Miller-Rushing, Abraham J., and Richard B. Primack.
“The Impact of Climate Change on the Flora of Thoreau’s Concord.” Arnoldia 66,
no. 3. 2009. Contributed in BHL by Smithsonian Libraries with permission from
The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. CC-BY-NC-SA.
Blending art and science
Thoreau lived alone at Walden Pond outside the town of Concord, Massachusetts from 1845-1847. He practiced self-reliance by building shelter, farming, fishing and spending long hours in observation of his surroundings. Thoreau proves himself dedicated to his task of environmental study at all times, even during social hours with friends like writer Ralph Waldo Emerson. Thanks to Emerson’s Biographical Sketch of Thoreau, we learn that when the two went walking:
“… [Thoreau] carried an old music-book to press plants; in his pocket, his diary and pencil, a spy-glass for birds, microscope, jack-knife, and twine. He wore a straw hat, stout shoes, strong gray trousers to brave shrub-oaks and smilax, and to climb a tree for a hawk’s or a squirrel’s nest. He waded into the pool for the water-plants, and his strong legs were no insignificant part of his armor.” (Biographical Sketch of Thoreau, 20)
Thoreau’s book Notes on New England Birds goes on to showcase the very data he collected on such walks (maybe even with Emerson in tow!). His trademark lyricism is reflected in his field notes, such as this observation of a red-winged blackbird’s nest:
“What Champollion can translate the hieroglyphics on these eggs?
It is always writing of the same character, though much diversified. While the bird picks up the material and lays the egg, who determines the style of the marking? When you approach, away dashes the dark mother, betraying her nest, and then chattering her anxiety from a neighboring bush…” (Notes on New England Birds, 251)
While the text maintains his melodious tone, it actually serves as critical data for the first records of animals in the area. For each of the birds, Thoreau records incremental updates over many years, illustrating changes in behaviors and migration. His notes reveal much more than a studious rigor, illuminating the true joy he experienced as a participant in nature. Thoreau takes an anthropomorphic approach to his notes on the birds, personifying each creature as an individual entity representative of its greater species:
“The loon comes in the fall to sail and bathe in the pond, making the woods ring with its wild laughter in the early morning…” (Notes on New England Birds, 3)
In Catalogue of Herbarium of Henry D. Thoreau, we see a less aesthetic side to
his data collection. These handwritten notes on specimens from Thoreau’s herbarium show methodical organization and notes on each plant — Latin names and all.
According to the Thoreau Society, he studied botany when he was at the Concord Academy and went on to collect about 900 plant specimens to dry and add to his herbarium. Through these two data sets, we see Thoreau’s scholastic pendulum swing between
art and science, emphasizing the multifaceted nature of his purpose.
A page of Thoreau’s handwritten notes from the catalogue of his herbarium.
Thoreau, Henry David. Catalogue of the Herbarium of Henry D. Thoreau,
Bequeathed to Boston Society of Natural History. Contributed in BHL by
Harvard University Botany Libraries.
Data that lives on
While Thoreau’s herculean efforts set precedents for the fields of biology and botany,
his data itself remains relevant to current research. Works by other authors exemplify his contributions to modern science, such as the 1974 publication by Richard Jefferson Eaton entitled A Flora of Concord. This book documents the plants and ferns that grew naturally in Concord from Thoreau’s time to present day. Without Thoreau’s data on flora and animals, scientists would not have access to such an extensive look at species’ respective survivals and declines over time.
The detail of Thoreau’s field journals has provided scientists with evidence that
allow them to evaluate changes in animal and plant behavior over a wide span of time.
“The Impact of Climate Change on the Flora of Thoreau’s Concord“, by Abraham J. Miller-Rushing and Richard B. Primack, boasts that Concord flora is “one of the best-documented floras in the country,” thanks to the initial work of Thoreau along with another local, Alfred Hosmer.
Since 1830, the floras have been inventoried five times, serving as an immense case study of the effects of a changing habitat, climate, topography, and other factors on native plants.
Britton’s violet (Viola brittoniana) is one of many wildflowers native to Concord.
Miller-Rushing, Abraham J., and Richard B. Primack.
The painstaking work that Thoreau endured is emphasized by his commitment to tracking plants even through the brutal New England winters. Miller-Rushing and Primack note: “From 1852 to 1858, he hiked around Concord and made regular observations of the first flowering times of over 500 different species of plants in an effort to create a calendar of the natural events in Concord.”
Thoreau and Hosmer documented plant occurrences as well as flowering and fruiting times, which have sensitive biological responses to alterations in climate. Their catalogs are allowing scientists to examine how and why certain species respond differently to changes in environment and compare the findings in Concord with those in other parts of the world. Such evidence provides a case study into the effects of climate change and loss of natural habitat on organisms’ behavior and survival.
The Penobscot Nation and Thoreau
Other books by Thoreau include information on the topography of New England infused with introspective narratives, such as Cape Cod and The Maine Woods. The Maine Woods documents Thoreau’s time spent with people of the Penobscot Nation, now one of Maine’s tribal governments. His time in Maine marks a formative period in his growth not only as a scientist but as a champion of the environment.
According to the Penobscot Nation’s Cultural & Historic Preservation Department, Thoreau did not always have a sincere respect for Native American culture. He was interested in Native Americans, but thought they were on the decline, as did most of society at the time. Starting in 1846, Thoreau made three trips to Maine and became increasingly well-acquainted with the Penobscot Nation.
While canoeing with tribe members Joseph Attean (sometimes spelled Aitteon) (1829-1870) and Joseph Polis (1809-1884) as guides, Thoreau came to know Native American people as individuals and teachers, rather than as a fascination he had held since youth.
Attean, the last hereditary and first elected Chief of the Penobscot Nation, guided
Thoreau on his second trip through Maine. Attean helped him develop more respect for the significance of Penobscot culture, though Thoreau still held on to lingering prejudices and stereotypes about Native Americans. Polis worked as the guide on his final trip. A Penobscot leader and representative for the tribe in official state and federal business, Polis expanded Thoreau’s worldview while bestowing on him an invaluable education on the land. Thoreau’s appreciation for the Penobscot Nation seemed to solidify thanks to his time with Polis. Thoreau describes a conversation while canoeing with Polis, writing: “I told him that in this voyage I would tell him all I knew, and he should tell me all he knew, to which he readily agreed.” (The Maine Woods, 172)
We cannot fully embrace Thoreau’s contribution to science without honoring the guidance that Attean and Polis provided both in his scientific and spiritual journey. Thoreau’s maturation is evident in The Maine Woods and integral to our understanding of his impact on environmentalism. Thoreau’s relationships with Attean and Polis advanced his knowledge of Maine’s landscape and his intimacy with nature. He acknowledges their tribe’s expertise and connection to the land, saying: “Nature must have made a thousand revelations to them which are still secrets to us.” (The Maine Woods, 185)
The Penobscot River in Maine. Maine Office of Tourism. “Penobscot River.”
While Walden may be Thoreau’s most famous work, The Maine Woods is the culmination of his identities at their prime. We see Thoreau’s ability to relate not only with nature, but with other people and cultures. For a man who chose to live in the woods for two years, Thoreau seemed to maintain a desire to engage with those around him throughout his life. His relationships with people like Emerson, Attean, and Polis take Thoreau out of the context of his achievements and reveal a person who sought genuine connection with people and the environment.
Thoreau’s scientific contributions and the ways in which they helped him grow in cultural awareness illustrate the importance of environmental research. The more Thoreau learned about his ecosystem, the more he fell in love with it and could show others how to develop a similar appreciation. The environment is still benefiting from Thoreau’s work today, as his data helps to advance research and his reflections motivate people to care for the earth as he did. A literary and scientific reading of Thoreau’s collection allows us to discover not only the effort behind his achievements, but the impetus for his life’s work.
References and Further Reading
Eaton, Richard Jefferson. A Flora of Concord. Series Publication: Museum of Comparative Zoology 4. Cambridge: Museum of Comparative Zoology: Harvard University, 1974.
Kucich, John J. “Lost in the Maine Woods: Henry David Thoreau, Joseph Nicolar, and the Penobscot World.” The Concord Saunterer 19/20 (2011): 22-52. Accessed July 9, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/23395210.
Miller-Rushing, Abraham J., and Richard B. Primack. “The Impact of Climate Change on the Flora of Thoreau’s Concord.” Arnoldia 66, no. 3 (2009): 2–9.
Penobscot Cultural and Historic Preservation. “Historic Preservation.” Accessed February 8, 2020. http://www.penobscotculture.com/.
Schneider, Richard J. “Life and Legacy: Thoreau’s Life.” The Thoreau Society. Accessed February 8, 2020. http://thoreausociety.org/life-legacy.
Thoreau, Henry David. Catalogue of the Herbarium of Henry D. Thoreau, Bequeathed to Boston Society of Natural History, n.d.
Thoreau, Henry David. Notes on New England Birds. Edited by Francis H. Allen. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1910.
Thoreau, Henry David. The Maine Woods. Edited by Sophia E. Thoreau and William Ellery Channing. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1864.
Thoreau, Henry David, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The Succession of Forest Trees, Wild Apples, with a Biographical Sketch of Thoreau.
The Riverside Literature Series 27. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1887.
I relate so strongly to this book. I constantly am philosophizing about things in my head and nobody understands me. But when I read, or listen in this case, to a book like this,
I feel sane again. I feel like maybe I’m not insane. There are just so many things in this book that come intuitively to me but seem so hard for others to understand.
You’re the best companion a man could ever have.
Walden (FULL Audiobook) – Bing video
Thank you, Henry David Thoreau.
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