Reading Walden

This week we read a segment of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. While I’ve heard of the work innumerable times and been aware of its cultural and environmental significance, this was my time actually reading any of it. I have to say, my feelings about it are mixed. Most of the ideas Thoreau advocates for are ones I agree with, but something about the way he presents them makes me hesitate. Maybe this is an issue of language changing over time or maybe it actually does stem from Thoreau having a massive superiority complex, regardless, his wording made it difficult for me to agree wholeheartedly with the messages of Walden.

As an environmentalist, of course the idea of being near to nature and experiencing land rather than owning it appeals to me. I appreciate the idea of finding a home in a location for any amount of time as expressed in this quote: “Well, there I might live, I said; and there I did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how I could let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring come in.” He expresses a deep appreciation and connection here to land that he will not acquire or occupy for any extended stretch of time. Feeling a deep connection to an environment the way you would the place in which you live is certainly a way to engage an emotional investment and a sense of stewardship for the work around you for any period of time.

Additionally he advocates, in short, for people to mind their own business, focusing on improving their lives. This again in its disparagement of greed and capitalistic success at the cost of lives is a point I agree with. Of productivity he writes, “Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.” This determination to always be working and searching for the next thing to consume is one that persists today. Our society often appears to be built around the acquisition of wealth with the value of other pursuits diminished in our perceptions because they lack profitability; however, as Thoreau points out we often are creating more problems than we solve with efficiency.

Ultimately I do believe the world might be a better place had more people adopted Thoreau’s ideas for appreciation of nature rather than ownership or consumption of it and for working on the problems of our homes before worrying about traveling anywhere new. These are points that can be interpreted in pro-environmentalist and anti-capitalist ways. Had he not referred to his cabin as one fit for a god, or to himself of the monarch of all the landscapes he surveyed, I might have appreciated those sentiments more. As it stands, the passage contained plenty of language evoking imperialism and the idea that Thoreau was in some way the first to see and imagine the areas around Walden as homes when he was certainly on formerly indigenous land. This erasure as well as the assertion that his particular way of living during his time at Walden was the most intentional way to live makes it difficult to find the piece progressive even if that was the case at its publication.