Walden

I think every person should have to live in nature for some period of time during your life.  Exactly what Henry David Thoreau did and writes about in his classic top 100 NY Times book, Walden, written in 1854.  What is it like to transcend into wilderness and be changed and affected by it?  I mean truly, deeply… there is so much in this text worth quoting and reflecting on every day.  To be contemplative, to experience the raw elements, winter, spring, summer and fall.  Building your home from the land, making your dinner from the land, interacting with the squirrels, the rabbits, and the ants.  Thinking about what to read, the economy, the solitude, the ponds, the village, the farms, and your neighbors. 

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. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

If you don’t get moved by this, you will never be moved.  Someone who is really engaged in true serenity.  As he states; “things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.”

How about this one:

It was very queer, especially in dark nights, when your thoughts had wandered to vast and cosmogonal themes in other spheres, to feel this faint jerk, which came to interrupt your dreams and link you to Nature again.  It seemed as if I might next cast my line upward into the air, as well as downward into the element which was scarcely more dense.  Thus I caught two fishes as it were worth one hook.

He concludes with: 

Such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn.  The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us.  Only that day dawns to which we are awake.  There is more day to dawn.  The sun is but a morning star.

As my favorite story concludes…. “are there any questions?”  ... and for those who understand and immerse themselves in this world, there should be enough to last a century or two.  Nature brings pure and rich expression and emotion for those who allow it to affect them.  When I got up before the sunrise and watched the sun wake up the nation, as it does every day, I was one with nature.  Can you think of when you were immersed in nature?  That is our challenge in life.  Not to get so caught up in the consumerism of our lives.  Thank goodness for authors like Thoreau who invites us into his journey, bearing his soul and showing how the little moments in nature make life simple and yet complex at the same time.  I had only read small sections of Walden previously.  I would encourage everyone to escape the crazy days of our lives and journey to your own Walden, whether it be at the ocean, in a forest, or in the country farm land, we all deserve to be moved by the solitude and freedoms that nature provide us.  Thanks for suggesting the journey of Walden.