Introduction

There are few more famous American authors than Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau’s name doesn’t look out of place in lists which include the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and J.D. Salinger. Thoreau lived from July 1817 to May 1862, a very interesting period of American history, and has left lasting contributions on natural history, environmentalism and philosophical austerity. I had been wanting to read Thoreau’s most famous book ‘Walden’ and finally managed to do so on holiday in 2019. I hope that upon reading this post you will learn more about the following three things: (1) An over-view of the 8 core lessons I captured from the book which I believe have significant relevance today, (2) context and criticism of Thoreau as an individual, and his time writing Walden, providing a rounded view of the man, (3) my full book notes from reading Walden.

8 Core Lessons Support Today

Thoreau had gone to Walden in a bit of life crisis, staying in Walden for two years from July 1845 to September 1847, and in reading Thoreau I felt surprised by just how many of the things he was promoting are as relevant today as they were for him at the time, if not even more relevant.

1. Minimalism / De-cluttering – More than 150 years before Marie Kondo’s sensational Netflix series ‘Tidying Up’ hit our screens, Thoreau was imploring his readers to realise that material things don’t bring you happiness, worse than that they imprison you. If Thoreau was alive today he would be outraged by the level of consumerism that exists and I could even see a situation where he’d be a hero for the FIRE (financial independence, retire early) movement.
2. Intermittent Fasting – Of all the health and well-being regimes currently in vogue, few are bigger than intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting means different things to different people, and going down that rabbit hole is not the aim of this piece, so broadly I’ll just say that intermittent fasting is restricting the time frames in which you eat each day, and having an extended period of fasting followed by a shorter feeding window. As an example, I try to have a minimum 14hr fasting period followed by a 10hr feeding window, a more extreme approach would be a 23hr fasting period followed by a 1hr feeding window. Thoreau believed in only having 1 meal per day, whilst his reasons for doing so seem to be less about health improvement and more about the lack of food he was able to find / buy, the point that he supported a short feeding window holds relevance today.
3. Self-reliance – So many people, myself included, have lost the ability to be self-reliant. If I was out in the wild, without signal, I don’t think I’d be able to last more than a couple of days. I just don’t have the core survival skill set to be able to find, prepare and cook food, or build a suitable enough shelter to protect myself from the elements. And whilst Thoreau does come into some criticism about his own ability to live ‘in the wild’, you can’t deny the beautiful picture of wild living that Thoreau implores in Walden and recognise how few today could live this way.
4. News is gossip – I especially love how predictive Thoreau was on this one. He saw it as a significant enough problem with print newspapers in the 1840s, but today with 24/7 news and competition between thousands of news channels, the ‘news’ is nothing of the sort. News has become a sales game, with perspectives and news topics chosen not because of their importance on people’s lives but what will bring in the biggest advertising revenues. And what sells? Sex, fear and gossip. The happy stories, the daily improvement of humanity is boring to people and doesn’t bring in eyes to watch the News, therefore the focus is on the sad, depressing and singularly stories, about the one violent crime that day, without any reference to the fact that people are living longer, happier and healthier lives on the whole.
5. Mental well-being to obtained from being in nature – The fresh morning air, the sound of the wind in the trees, the shimming water of the lakes, being in nature and taking time to appreciate the beauty of simple things is exceptionally good for our mental well-being, and Thoreau was writing about all of it 150 years ago. So many of us need more nature in our lives, reading Walden will make you want to experience it more often.
6. Clean eating & drinking — You won’t find the phrase ‘clean living’ in Walden but many health guru’s would say that Thoreau’s diet of no animals, no alcohol, and no coffee would make him a social media influencer today. Similar to intermittent fasting, part of the reason Thoreau did forgo these was because of cost, the fact he did and waxed lyrical about omitting them is the piece that means Thoreau holds relevance today.
7. Money can’t bring happiness – So Thoreau definitely isn’t unique in saying this one. Both rich and poor men have been saying this for centuries, and yet so few people seem to take heed of the advice. And I do really enjoy the language that Thoreau uses to make his point.  ‘Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.’ It really is beautiful prose to make such an important point.
8. Seek Truth – Thoreau often talks about simplicity in Walden, and what is more simple to focus on than the truth, and living a truthful life? One of my favourite phrases from Walden is this: ‘Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me Truth.’ Today’s world is increasingly complex, with so many people having a vested interest in one perspective over another, and these vested interests often aren’t easy to see, think paid advertising on Instagram as one example. Thoreau talks about the benefits of cutting through the crap. Search for truth, have truth as your guiding light, and you will be living a good life.

Context & Criticism of Thoreau

The time at which Thoreau wrote Walden was an interesting one in American history. While we need to be careful not to judge Thoreau by today’s standards, it is important to point out a few things about his life, especially in context to the time he was writing Walden, which might impact your reading. Firstly, the positive. In a time of slavery, Thoreau was an abolitionist, and was outspoken in condemning the Fugitive Slave Law and even refused to pay Massachusetts poll tax sighting the reason that it sustained slavery. However, some criticism is laid at Thoreau’s door.

The primary criticism is that Thoreau did not really live in the level of isolation portrayed in Walden. When not living in the cabin, he lived the rest of his life in large comfortable households, earning a living as a pencil-maker and land surveyor as well as lecturing and of course authoring many books. Even when in the cabin, he used to spend evenings at friends and families houses enjoying their hospitality. His mother even helped him out by doing his laundry at times and cooking him food, which was easy enough given his family home was only a twenty minute walk from the cabin.

This leads some to argue that Walden is less a cornerstone of isolated living literature and more the example of someone faking it, creating a fantasy about living a certain way but not reflecting the reality of living alone, in nature, with only the basics. They say that it’s this romanticising of the lifestyle which means he fails to really talk about the emotional and physical challenges of isolation and the risks of living that way of life with minimal support. Perhaps, if he had truly lived that experience perhaps he might have the given challenges more ‘air time’ and value in the book.

Take from this criticism what you will. I felt like it was important to share it as I feel too often we romanticise the lives and experiences of others without having the full picture, e.g. the very successful businessmen who is a millionaire with great abs, but also divorced twice and never sees his children. Having this context to Thoreau reminds us he is not infallible, and acts as a reminder that cabin living isn’t necessarily the romantic dream it’s often perceived to be.

For me, this criticism doesn’t take away the beauty of the words of Walden or take away the feelings of wanting to spend more time and energy in nature away from the hustle and bustle, fumes and pressures of metropolitan living.

Book Notes

Detailed below are direct quotes I captured at the time of reading Walden, I hope that they give both a narrative to the book but also portray some of the beauty of Thoreau’s words. Any errors – grammatical or spelling – are mine, so I apologise in advance!

Chapter 1 – Economy

• ‘One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.’
• ‘For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.’
• ‘The necessities of life for men is this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed under the several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success.’
• ‘Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor.’
• ‘There are some who complain most energetically and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their duty. I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.’
• ‘My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply not to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles; to be hindered from accomplishing which for want of a little common sense, a little enterprise and business talent, appeared not so sad as foolish.’
• ‘No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, then to have a sound conscience.’
• ‘The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.’
• ‘Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of. A comfortable house for a rude and hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors, was once made here almost entirely of such materials as Nature furnished ready to their hands…[yet] in modern civilised society not more than one half the families own a shelter.’
• ‘The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indulgence of another. On the one side is the palace, on the other are the almshouse and the “silent poor”.’
• ‘Contrast the physical condition of the Irish with that of the North American Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any other savage race before it was degraded by context with the civilised man.’
• ‘Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation; now, a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no house and no housekeeper.’
• ‘This spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make s fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once.’
• ‘I learned from my two years’ experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one’s necessary food, even in this latitude; that a man use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength.’
• ‘As for a habitat, if I were not permitted still to squat, I might purchase one acre at the same price for which the land I cultivated was sold – namely, eight dollars and eight cents. But as it was, I considered that I enhanced the value of the land by squatting on it.’
• ‘I look upon England today as an old gentleman who is traveling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated from long housekeeping, which he has not the courage to burn; great trunk, little trunk, bandbox, and bundle. Throw away the first three at least.’
• ‘For more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labour of my hands, and I found that, by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living. The whole of my winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study.’
• ‘Some are “industrious”, and appear to love labour for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to such I have at present nothing to say. Those who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work twice as hard as they do – work till they pay for themselves, and get their free papers. For myself I found that the occupation of a day-labourer was the most independent of any, especially as it requires only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The labourer’s day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to this chosen pursuit, independent of his labour; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other.’
• ‘You must have a genius for charity as well as for anything else. As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full. Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution.’
• ‘Be sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them.’

 

Chapter 2 – Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

• ‘Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.’
• ‘All memorable events, I should say, transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere.’
• ‘Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, I’d it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion [e.g. tasks].’
• ‘To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.’

Chapter 3 – Reading

• ‘In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident.’
• ‘The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity.’
• ‘To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will take the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem.’
• ‘Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.’

Chapter 4 – Sounds

• ‘Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, almost the pines and hickories and sumacs, in undistributed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around…’
• ‘I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel.’

Chapter 5 – Solitude

• ‘I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced.’
• ‘I never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but one, and that was a few weeks after I cane to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the bear neighbourhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life…But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery.’
• ‘I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that so companionable as solitude.’
• ‘What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contented? Not my or thy great-grandfather’s, but our great-grandmother Nature’s universal, vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has kept herself young always, outlived so many old Parrs in her day, and fed her health with their decaying fatness.’

Chapter 6 – Visitors

• ‘I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was bit the third chair for them all, but they generally economised the room by standing up.’
• ‘I require of a visitor that he be not actually starving, though he may have the very best appetite in the world, however he got it. Objects of charity are not guests. Men who did not know when their visit had terminated, though I went about my business again, answering them from greater and greater remoteness.’

Chapter 7 – The Bean-Field

• ‘The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labour with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but his last fruits also.’

Chapter 8 – The Village

• ‘After hoeing, or perhaps reading and writing, in the forenoon, I usually bathed again in the pond, swimming across one of its coves for a stint, and washed the dust of labour from my person, or smoothed out the last wrinkle which study had made, and for the afternoon was absolutely free. Every day or two I strolled to the village to heard some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs.’
• ‘Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realise where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.’
• ‘…I did not pay a tax to, or recognise the authority of, the State which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle, at the door of its senate-house…But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.’
• ‘I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough.’

Chapter 9 – The Ponds

• ‘A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows.’
• ‘But since I left those shores the woodchoppers have still further laid then waste, and now for many a year there will be no more rambling through the aisles of the wood, with occasional vistas through which you see the water. My Muse may be excused if she is silent henceforth. How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down?’
• ‘…and the villagers, who scarcely know where it lies, instead of going to the pond to bathe or drink, are thinking to bring its water, which should be as sacred as the Ganges at least, to the village in a pipe, to wash their dishes with!’
• ‘White Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light. If they were permanently congealed, and small enough to be clutched, they would, perchance, be carried off by slaves, like precious stones, to adorn the heads of emperors: but being liquid, and ample, and secured to us and our successors forever, we disregard them…’

Chapter 10 – Baker Farm

• No Notes

Chapter 11 – Higher Laws

• ‘I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both.’
• ‘No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which hold its life by the same tenure that he does.’
• ‘The practical objection to animal food in my case was its uncleanness; and besides, when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially.’
• ‘Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilised.’
• ‘I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or an evening with a fish of tea! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them!’
• ‘If you would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, Work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to overcome, but she must be overcome.’

Chapter 12 – Brute Neighbours and Chapter 13 – House Warming

• No Notes

Chapter 14 – Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors

• ‘I weathered some merry snow-storms, and spent some cheerful winter evenings by my fireside, while the snow whirled wildly without, and even the booting of the owl was hushed. For many weeks I met no one in my walks but those who cane occasionally to cut wood and sled it to the village.’

Chapter 15 – Winter Animals

• ‘For sounds in winter nights, and often in winter days, I heard the forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owl indefinitely far; such a sound as the frozen earth would yield if struck with a suitable plectrum, the very lingua vernacular of Walden Wood, and quite familiar to me at last, though I never saw the bird while it was making it.’

Chapter 16 – The Pond in Winter

• ‘After a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavouring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what – how – when – where? But there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad Windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips. I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight.’
• ‘Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful.’

Chapter 17 – Spring

• ‘At length the sun’s rays have attained the right angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snowbanks, and the sun, dispersing the mist, smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with incense, through which the traveller picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling fills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter which they are bearing off.’
• ‘Thaw with his gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other but breaks in pieces.’
• ‘Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness…we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things We mysterious and unexplored leaves, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us.’

Chapter 18 – Conclusion

• ‘Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.’
• ‘I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.’
• ‘I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.’
• ‘Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense?’
• ‘Let every one mind his own business, and endeavour to be what he was made.’
• ‘No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth.’
• ‘However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names…The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise.’
• ‘Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.’
• ‘Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me Truth. I sat at a table where rich food and wine was in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.’