Many years ago, when I lived in a gray polluted city in the Rust Belt, I was startled to learn that people hated Thoreau.
Mind you, my closest friend was a poet with a degree in philosophy who was as enraptured by Thoreau as I was. We loved the idea of living in tune with nature and enjoyed walks in the woods. On a camping trip, we learned that we loved trees but feared ticks and wildlife. A scary raccoon, who did not look like a Disney character, wandered into our camp. We also learned that no amount of Off! can keep the mosquitoes away.
But our weak camping talents aside, Thoreau made us see the world differently. You can turn to almost any page in Walden and take inspiration. Here’s one of my favorites.
This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt sleeves, and though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me.
Now that it’s spring, I plan to take some evening walks. Thank you, Thoreau, for the inspiration.
But some of my non-poetic citified friends hated Thoreau. One day, I happened to mention my love of Walden to a charming posh friend over lunch.
She fumed. “What a hypocrite that guy was! If he’d had to really live in the woods, he wouldn’t have lasted a day. His mother did his laundry, and he came home for dinner.”
“Well, I never heard anything about his laundry, but he did live in the woods!” I said, laughing. “And he’s such a great writer.”
Captain Nemo has a correction to make about the laundry. “More likely it was Emerson’s wife who did his laundry!”
On another occasion, my friend and I stopped in Concord because she wanted to tour Louisa May Alcott’s house. I would have loved to visit Walden Pond as well, and perhaps Emerson’s house, if it’s still there, but decided it was best not to mention the Transcendentalists, who were essentially radical 19th-century hippies. (It turned out my friend was a Republican, so I can only suppose Thoreau was a threat to the economy.)
Another of my friends, a devout Methodist stay-at-home mom, who spent most of her time supervising her children’s homework and writing their papers, completely lost it when I mentioned Thoreau. She, too, was upset about Thoreau’s laundry!
This must be one of those bizarre complaints that get passed down from female generation to female generation of non-Thoreau fans. If I lived in the woods, damned straight I’d take my laundry to Mom.
Anyway, I recommend an excellent new PBS documentary about Thoreau. This film may send you back to the books, and may even give you strength to cope with the modern world.
