About a year ago I started reading Austin Kleon’s blog. I subscribed to his “free, but not cheap” newsletter and eventually stumbled upon a post titled “My Year With Thoreau.” The post reminded me of the naturalist I longed to study.
I once started reading Walden while backpacking in Yosemite National Park. My friend asked if I was being ironic. This wasn’t my intent. I didn’t read or contemplate much during that trip. Too large a crowd and too compact a schedule for solitude. Which was ironic.
Kleon re-introduced me to Thoreau and pointed me to Laura Walls’s biography, Henry David Thoreau: A Life, which I read immediately. I also bought the abridged Thoreau journal. This blog was eventually conceived from this literary trifecta: blog post, biography, journal.
For the world is but outdoors,-and we duck behind a panel.
Henry David Thoreau, February 10, 1841
Henry David Thoreau
A short word about Henry David Thoreau. His given name was David Henry Thoreau. He insisted on being called Henry David after college, but never legally changed his name.
He was born and he died in Concord, Massachusetts. A writer all his life, he published two books before dying and wrote numerous essays, lectures, and poems. His writing never brought him monetary fortune, but his words did bring lasting fame. Walden is his magnum opus.
To support his hobbies, he worked as a day laborer, a surveyor, and in the family business producing pencils. He was an avid naturalist, perhaps one of the first. His work helped inspire John Muir, perhaps the preeminent naturalist. Thoreau was also a life-long abolitionist, with an active role in the Underground Railroad.
Thoreau’s work brims with wisdom and insight. He writes a lot about nature, but also about how to live. He was a keen observer of human nature and mother nature. He blends the two miraculously, poignantly.
Thoreau lived a simple life. He didn’t have much and desired the same. He repeatedly describes nature in fascinating ways and teaches us that getting outdoors cleanses the soul.
In his journal the day after moving to Walden Pond, Thoreau wrote, “Yesterday I came here to live.” We don’t have to go to the wilderness to live. But we must go outside to experience life.
I hope this blog inspires you–and me–to do so more often.
