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Remembering Thoreau
I have been living in
a cabin by a pond for
several months, including
two months of solid cold,
snow and rain. Almost all
of this time was spent
inside the cabin, and it
made me hearken back to my
youth, when I was an
ardent admirer of Henry
Thoreau, whom I first came
into contact with when I
was a sophomore in high
school. He was one of my
early favorite writers,
along with Emerson,
Whitman, Poe, Robert Louis
Stevenson, Conan Doyle and
others. Thoreau appealed
to me as an iconoclast,
who could function very
well outside the
interdependencies of
society. One of the first
and best things I learned
from Thoreau was that a
fertile mind doesn't
suffer boredom. During the
last several months, I
have had to call upon all
the fertility my mind
possesses and it made me
wonder about something. If
there is fertility in
chaos, maybe the opposite
is true as well. Perhaps
fertility is missing
somewhat in a state of
peace and quiet, and
inaction. Thoreau showed
us, however, that serenity
and fertility are not
incompatible.
Anyway,
having turned my thoughts
to Thoreau, I began to
compare him to other
writers who remind me in
some way of Thoreau. These
include Lao Tzu,
Krishnamurti, Alan Watts,
D.T. Suzuki, Gary Snyder,
Thomas Merton, and a few
others.
When
I was sixteen, my mother
and I traveled to
Cambridge, Massachusetts
to visit my brother. When
I told him I had been
reading Thoreau, he asked
me if I would like to see
Walden Pond, which turned
out to be a fairly short
walk. When we arrived at
Walden, everything looked
pristine. The pond was
surrounded by trees, there
were no signs or
structures. With one
exception. At one place
along the pond, about
twenty feet from the
water, there was a hot dog
stand. It was closed, and
we were the only people
around, so it was all
placid and
unspoiled—except for
the hot dog stand, whose
presence there bothered me
in a strange way for years
afterwards. Maybe because
I couldn't imagine
what Thoreau would think
of such a thing. Perhaps
it would make him laugh, I
decided.
Thoreau
had a way of cultivating
isolation that made his
solitude a rich
experience. Although
I'm living in a cabin
by a pond, I am not living
in solitude. My
niece's children visit
me several times every
day. Sometimes I ask
myself, "What would
Thoreau have done if
children had come to his
door?" I like to
think he would have found
an interesting way to
entertain them.
Now
that the days are becoming
sunny and warm, and the
cherry trees are blooming,
I understand much better
the human desire to
experience Nature and the
seasonal changes. And, in
the spring, to be
privileged to observe the
burgeoning of new life of
all sorts.
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