A dose of Thoreau in the right quantity is good for anyone, anytime. But if there ever was a perfect time to delve into him - this is it! I first came to Thoreau by way of Gandhi, but visiting Walden in the winter of 2010 set me on a path of no-return. Since then, I returned physically to Walden in the summer of 2014, read more transcendental literature and was eagerly looking forward to a trip this Christmas in preparation for which I was going to read Walden (again) and read Laura Dassow Walls' latest biography of him. That trip is up in the air now but this past month of (re) reading Thoreau has comforted me despite the madness that is the world today.
My daughter asked me one night as to why I admire Thoreau so much and I realized that it was the Thoreauvian idea of simplify, simplify, simplify that I admired the most! Thoreau challenges me to live deliberately and get to the truth of my existence. He proclaimed in Walden "My greatest skill has been to want but little" and this is a skill I aspire to. I also seek membership into his "Knights of umbrella and bundle" - but alas despite being a lighter traveler I am not there yet.
Thoreau is commonly perceived as a hermit, almost a misanthrope. (Also people need to read his full quote about Government. He didn't say no government at once, but called for a better government immediately!) He was a dutiful son, a loving brother, a loyal friend, and an inspiring mentor. The more I read about him I feel like he was the true renaissance man after Da Vinci. An inventor of graphite pencils, a civil surveyor, a botanist and birder, a naturalist of some repute, an Indian ethnographer, an ardent abolitionist (credit to his mom and other women of his household) , an inspiring speaker who combined wit and wisdom, and not to mention a wonderful philosopher and writer - he wore many hats and was truly a jack of all trades. He was also a man of contradictions and someone who struggled with the conflict - hated hunting but couldn't give up meat, was eager to learn from natives but at times dismissed their myths, made a living by surveying which in turn destroyed the woods he adored.
He was a man ahead of his times and is therefore a man for all seasons. When he lamented that "men have become the tools of their tools" I see a commentary on the modern day walking texting phone zombies. When he complains that "those things for which most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants" I am reminded of Hassan Minhaj's piece on if colleges are still worth it. When he wrote about the cable under the Atlantic he commented it appeared that the goal seemed to be "to talk fast and not to talk sensibly... After all, the man whose horse trots a mile a minute does not carry the most important messages" - he could have been writing about our penchant for tweets. And before Jon Stewart critiqued the 24 hour news cycle Thoreau observed "Hardly a man takes a half hour's nap after dinner but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, "What's the news" as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels."
Before we conclude he was just a 19th century equivalent of a late-night comic wielding satire as his only weapon, we should remember the courage with which he spoke up for John Brown when the entire nation seemed to disown him, even the abolitionists. In A Plea for Captain John Brown we witness Thoreau referring to death as an honor conferred only upon the select few who knew how to live. However, the death of such an honorable person enrages him especially because society determines him to be a failure. He states, “They talk as if a man’s death were a failure, and his continued life, be it of whatever character, were a success.” The death of John Brown was not simply the death of a man, but the death of a principle, and he regarded this event "as a touchstone designed to bring out with glaring distinctness the character of this government." In 2020 we witnessed the death of George Floyd and his death revealed more about the character of our government than anything else. We were all implicated in his death and this is a feeling that Thoreau was familiar with. Walls states
“Thoreau was a haunted man. He and everyone he knew were all implicated: the evil of slavery, the damnation of the Indian, the global traffic in animal parts, the debasement of nature, the enclosure of the ancient commons - the threads of the modern global economy were spinning him and everyone around him into a dehumanizing web of destruction"
This is probably one of the reasons that Thoreau resonates even today when we as a species are faced with two main crises. One is the existential threat to the planet, its wildlife and its wilderness. The other is the world we are creating on the back of always-on, always-connected technology that fuels the gig-economy that makes us all expendable. In today’s screen-filled world where real nature is replaced by virtual reality, where privacy is rendered non-existent and voyeurism has become acceptable, the transcendentalists, especially Thoreau offer real solutions. Reclaiming wild lands and with it our wild spirits, getting comfortable in solitude by shutting out distractions and being disconnected, and living deliberately as opposed to instagramming every moment is needed now more than ever. Reading Thoreau is a reminder to myself of what I truly aspire to and how far away I am from my ideal. But as he said in Walden this is not an "ode to dejection, but to brag lustily as chanticleer in the morning only to wake" myself up.
