I remember reading Walden when I was younger and fantasizing about a simple life in nature. It sounded so romantic. After my girlfriend quoted from it recently (“to live deliberately”), I went back to see again with fresh eyes the components of his journey. The thing that strikes me is how much other people played essential roles in making his experiment a success.
First, the land on which he built his cabin was owned by his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson. The supplies necessary for sustaining himself were procured “with the help of family and friends, particularly his mother, his best friend, and Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Waldo Emerson.” Even in the chapter entitled Solitude, he talks of his new companion, an old settler who arrives nearby and an old woman with great memory.
The very next chapter is titled Visitors. “ Thoreau talks about how he enjoys companionship (despite his love for solitude) and always leaves three chairs ready for visitors.”
Two chapters later is the Village—“Thoreau's reflections on the journeys he takes several times a week to Concord, where he gathers the latest gossip and meets with townsmen.”
Indeed throughout the book he has interactions with a number of others—John Field, hard-working Irish farmhand; William Ellery Channing; winter visitors including a farmer and a woodchopper.
For all his embraces and reflections on the simple life of solitude in the woods, he still kept up quite a social life with his friends and neighbors. He was by no stretch a hermit.
Comments