Walden

I’m so glad you feel this way about Walden, @fbgreen! You make what I think is a really important point about the way people can allow their lives to be directed by what others think of them. It’s not a new problem, and Thoreau is very much aware of it as a hindrance to self-realization and what we would these days call an “authentic” existence, but the scale of the problem has grown enormously with the advent of social media, which hugely increases the pressure people, especially young people, feel to create an image of themselves that will win acceptance and approval from others.

@averyw: I love how you bring so many important strands together here: Walden Pond as a metaphor in some ways for Thoreau himself; the pond’s natural cycles as an example of the many cycles that pervade life, Nature, and the universe; and the idea that change is a fundamental informing principle of all things. I think your connection with the chapter title, “Spring,” is spot-on, and I wonder how you see paragraphs 6–9 of this chapter, in particular, in light of your observations about change as a theme in Walden.

@tirone: Whether or not Thoreau was thinking of his own effort at self-realization in describing the foxes, it’s easy to see a parallel. I like your idea.

I think it’s interesting, too, that at first the foxes aspire to be dogs, and then, in the next sentence, to be human. In paragraphs 9 and 10 below, humans and dogs collaborate to hunt foxes. Better to be the hunter than the hunted, I suppose.

Thoreau’s narrative of the hunter who shoots a fox in paragraph 10 is unsentimental, yet paragraph 4 certainly sets me up, as a reader, to root for the fox as the story unfolds.

There’s a lot to ponder here, especially in light of what Thoreau has to say in “Higher Laws” about hunting, fishing, and the fact that “We are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers.”

The Chapter “Winter Animals”, and especially paragraph four make me wonder if in Thoreau’s descriptions of the sounds and activity of the animals, he was really describing his own emotions “… as if laboring with some anxiety, or seeking expression, struggling for light …” and his views on humankind “… awaiting their transformation …” Or perhaps I see (or share) in his words my own anxiety and struggle for light.

I am grateful to learn more about Thoreau by reading your insightful comments.

BTW my icon is a photograph I took of Farm Pond in Framingham, perhaps near “Harmony Grove” where Thoreau spoke at the annual Fourth of July rallies in the late 1860’s.

In this paragraph, Thoreau urges readers to “advance confidently in the direction of their dreams” and to live deliberately, even if their path looks unconventional. This echoes the message he introduced much earlier in “Where I Lived, and What I Lived For” where he talks about stripping life down to its essentials so he can truly live intentionally rather than being tied to a routine or society’s expectations.

Thoreau returns to this same language in Conclusion, but he shifts its purpose. Instead of just simplifying life, he now pushes the reader to act boldly and trust that a more intentional and thoughtful life will open new possibilities. He begins the book by describing his own deliberate living and in the end turns outward and speaks to the reader. What began as a personal experiment in simplicity and finding onesself becomes a broader philosophy of action.

Walden has honestly been such a pleasure to read, and I’m shocked to realize it’s become one of my favorite books. The themes of living intentionally and refusing to let society’s expectations dictate your choices really speak to me, especially at a time when it feels like everyone (myself included) goes through life so carefully, aware of how we might be perceived. Thoreau’s perspective feels liberating because he encourages people to live for themselves, not for an audience. Reading Walden has me want to be more intentional about the way I live and more thoughtful about my choices. Am I doing something because it genuinely aligns with who I want to be and what my values are, or because I feel pressured to?

I absolutely love this paragraph and think the idea of every new day being a fresh start is incredibly important. So many people get stuck in a loop of negativity, letting the weight of one bad day spill into the next. The ability to let go, reset, and start fresh each morning sounds simple, but it’s actually a skill many people struggle with in practice. Learning to release yesterday’s mistakes and allow new “sprouts” of goodness to grow is a powerful form of resilience, and in my opinion, self love.

Thoreau’s description and metaphorical use of the pond conveys many themes about change and how even the most stable of, the most set in our ways, can have our perspectives, values, and ideas altered. Thoreau really emphasizes a sort of cycle here with the pond as it thunders in the morning, goes quiet in the afternoon, and thunders again as the sun retreats into the night. This cycle, along with many different analogies, demonstrates the persistence of change and the ‘ponds’ way of reacting to this change. In many ways Thoreau’s cycle can illustrate a form of changing, existing, and then changing again. This cycle is one that everything in the universe undergoes, constant unescapable change, and Thoreau does an incredible job as using Walden pond as a surrogate to portray how change effects everything, including large almost immovable bodies of water. Further down in the paragraph Thoreau states, “Who would have suspected so large and cold and thick-skinned a thing to be so sensitive?”, in many ways the pond can serve as a parallel for Thoreau and his journey to discovering deeper meaning of life through living at Walden pond. Thoreau came to the pond searching for deeper meaning, at the beginning of his journey he was not as affected by nature, but overtime grew a deep admiration and affinity for all that existed around him in the environment. I think this paragraph was a really beautiful analogy for change and ties directly into the chapter name, “Spring”.

[ We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty]

This entire chapter rightfully reads as a goodbye to Walden pond, but this sentence in particular really sticks out. This is why Thoreau moved out to Walden in the first place. It was to live in the moment, to escape the constant rush forward of modern society and find out what truly mattered to him. I believe the documentary also mentioned he was grieving a sibling, which may be alluded to in the part about not “atoning for the neglect of past opportunities”.

@ekclodfelter: I take him to mean both—that is, the particular robin sitting on a particular twig that he heard on a particular summer day.

[and then steered straight to Canada, with a regular honk from the leader at intervals, trusting to break their fast in muddier pools. ]

Funny callback to the previous chapter.