Thoreau still speaks to buried teen in all of us

Kennebec Journal ^ | 5/6/12 | Michael T. Dolan

[Borges]

I can see it clearly: the American literature textbook from my sophomore year in high school, complete with faded red cover, frayed spine, and a list of students who had rifled through its pages in years past.

In it I discovered a kindred spirit, soul mate and best friend. His name was Henry David Thoreau, and he died 150 years ago today, at the age of 44.

I remember his first words to me:

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

They were powerful words to introduce to a teenager, words that spoke to the long-standing vocation of teens everywhere: to question, to challenge, to rebel!

Thoreau went on:

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears."

More teenage validation. I was hooked.

To me, Thoreau, who was born in 1817 in Concord, Mass., is one of the most important figures in American history.

Some folks change how people do things. Henry Ford and Steve Jobs come to mind. Others change how people think. Thoreau falls into this latter category, and his influence goes far beyond how quickly we travel (Thoreau was a passionate walker and perfected the "art of sauntering") or how easily our smartphones can map the route (Thoreau was an accomplished surveyor, too).

Thoreau's influence can be found in the inspiration his life and his writings provide to the world.

In 1845, at the age of 27, Thoreau set out on one of man's greatest experiments.

Building a small cabin in the woods by Walden Pond, on property owned by his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thoreau spent two years and two months living in nature and chronicling his observations. The resulting text, "Walden, or Life in the Woods," continues to inspire people and is considered by many the bible of the environmental movement.

Likewise, Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience," written after he spent a night in jail for refusing to pay taxes to a government that supported slavery, has inspired world-changers such as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Thoreau was many things to many people, and sometimes he is too easily placed into bumper-sticker purgatory, his evocative and biting one-liners used to advance a particular cause or agenda. Thoreau the Environmentalist. Thoreau the Naturalist. Thoreau the Conscientious Objector. Thoreau the Transcendentalist. Thoreau the Abolitionist.

Thoreau was all these things, but he was much more, and to put labels on him is to limit his legacy. Above all, Thoreau was an uncompromising individual who valued life to such an extent that he spent his entire existence examining that life. In other words, he was a truth-seeker.

Truth-seeking comes easily to teenagers, and there is no better time to discover Thoreau. Somewhere along the line, though, that teenager too often stops seeking the truth, and by the time adulthood rolls around, conformity takes hold and truth-seeking becomes a less noble and more challenging endeavor.

It is then that the frayed American lit textbook needs to be opened one more time. Thoreau calls out from the pages, reminding the "grown-up" of the directive that so inspired many years before:

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

Thoreau never let go of that urge to discover that there is indeed more than the pursuit of fame, fortune and the material possessions that often enslave us. Examine yourself, and follow the dreams found therein.

To the extent that we often spend our lives like hamsters spinning the wheel, traveling so far on the treadmill of life and yet discovering so little, Thoreau is the chanticleer calling us to wake up and discover the essence of life.

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," he told me many years ago, providing a grace note to Socrates' famed admonition: "The unexamined life is not worth living."

Thoreau may be 150 years gone, but he continues to speak to the buried teenager in all of us. As we celebrate his life today, let us not forget to examine our own.

[SampleMan]

Yes, I read Walden. And I’ll never get that time back. The mind of a navel gazing rich boy is best left unexplored.

Thoreau a genius? Please.

[SampleMan]

Thoreau had a great sense of humor about what he was doing and didn’t try to imbue it with any false grandeur.

Taking time out of life to write a book about the wonders of living in a cabin, is about as imbued with false grandeur as one can get.

Had Thoreau taken on adult responsibilities, his incites would have been far more impactful. But then he would have realized that most everyone already understood those incites, making a book unnecessary.

It is most interesting that Thoreau had his naturalist epiphanies, while most of America still earned a living working under the sun on farms all day.

[what's up]

Civil disobedience is an American tradition (that Thoreau codified). There is nothing wrong with it

All depends on what you're being disobedient about.

I'm not sure Thoreau causes were noble.

[Borges]

You didn’t find it funny at all? It’s filled with jokes. Thoreau was a literary genius every step of the way - just reading his prose is a delight.

[Borges]

The point is that you don’t have to agree with his cause. I didn’t agree with Muhammad Ali’s cause (refusing to be drafted) but it was still deserving of respect.

[what's up]

So you think you should respect all views all the time?

[SampleMan]

Sometimes I’m too put off by the premise to enjoy the style.

Very smart and witty folk can still be horribly self-absorbed and naive.

[Borges]

Of course not. These are cases where the cause in question is entirely personal.

[what's up]

These are cases where the cause in question is entirely personal.

Not sure what you mean by that. When Thoreau go published his cause ceased to be personal.

[Scoutmaster]

Although I enjoy Thoreau's writings, I've never truly viewed him as going 'to the woods.' He was on the outskirts of Concord, able to stroll into town when he wanted to do so.

In 1846, Thoreau visited Katahdin in Maine. True wilderness and woods. He didn't view it in the same light as his little cabin in the sunshine outside of Concord. He called it "grim and wild," "savage and dreary," fit only for "men nearer of kin to the rocks and wild animals than we."

Thoreau biographers Geral T. Blanchard and Roderick Nash say Thoreau was nearly hysterical from his experience with true wilderness.

Methinks I take pre-teen Scouts to places that would unnerve that man of the wilderness, Henry David Thoreau.

[Borges]

Thoreau wasn’t self absorbed. He’s quite self deprecating. You’re confusing him with his environmentalist descendants.

[Borges]

Thoreau’s short essay was published in 1849 and understood to refer to opposing slavery. It was only after his death that it started to be reprinted and quoted for just about every cause you could think of.

[tet68]

If there is a teenager still buried in me, that wasn’t
killed by Vietnam, failed marriage, drugs, alcohol, or
too many years of democrat domination, he better
get the hell out while he still can.

[Borges]

In Walden, Thoreau makes very clear that ‘civilization’ is nearby. He made no claims about living in the wilderness.

[Borges]

He didn’t make any grandiose claims for it nor did he claim that everyone should do it. It was a personal recollection that has been philosophically and ideologically magnified after his death.

[what's up]

Thoreau wrote for publication. (Walden in 1854). He also gave lectures.

He was quite influential in the transcendental community and was not just an isolated, solitary figure.

[Borges]

The point is that his cause was not unjust and the philosophical precepts attributed to him are mostly false. I didn’t know you’re taking issue with the entire American transcendental movement. Do you also dislike Emerson, Margaret Fuller and Bronson Alcott? Hawthorne was also tangentially involved.

[SamAdams76]

I live not too far from Concord, MA and get a kick out of all the trendy yuppies that flock to Walden Pond to "experience" the outdoors as Thoreau once did. Every weekend when the weather is nice, the Walden Pond parking lots overflow with Volvos and Volkswagons and the yuppies come climbing out of them in their Abercrombie & Fitch clothing, pulling their spanking new stylish-looking backpacks and hiking shoes out of the trunks that they just purchased at North Face or L.L. Beans.

After making much fuss over adjusting and re-adjusting their packs, they grab their water bottles and embark on their mile and a half "hike", along with thousands of others, on the well-worn stone-dust trails surrounding the "replica" of Thoreau's one-room cabin. Then it's back to the cars to dump the still brand-new backpacks (destined for eBay) and head to the various gift shops and bookstores where they spend hundreds of dollars on knick-knacks to show their friends back home that yes, they made the obligatory pilgrimage to Walden Pond. Then they slap the $6.95 Walden Pond decal on the back of their vehicles, in between OBX (Outer Banks) and MV (Martha's Vineyard), and head back to their city condos and brownstones where they cap off the day with a meal in the North End or maybe over in Cambridge.

Personally, I think Thoreau would be horrified to see the way his pond has been turned into a yuppified ticky-tacky tourist trap.

Now if you want to have a real "Thoreau" experience in the Concord/Carlisle area, there are dozens of great trails in this area that Thoreau walked that are all but forgotten about. One of my favorites is the 10-rod trail that runs from just off Route 4 in Carlisle to the Harvard-owned Estabrook Woods in Concord. I take my dog walking there all the time and I hardly see anybody out there because it's not "touristy" and there is real hiking involved.

[Publius]

Bravo! Worthy of Steyn or O’Rourke.

[Borges]

Very well said.