Walden
(Henry David Thoreau)

Economy

“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.”

Inspired in equal measure by his friend, poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Transcendentalist movement that they were both a pretty significant part of, Thoreau takes a “kitchen sink” approach to the details of his two-year experiment. He treats this opening section of the book as a diary; as a how-to guide on thrifty living; as a humorless manifesto/sermon about the evils of modern society; and as an exercise in the flowery admiration for nature that weaves its way throughout the rest of the book.

One popular criticism at the time of the book’s release holds true: it hits you over the head with the minutia of the experiment. In Thoreau’s defense, he remains well-aware of his own flaws and contradictions throughout.

His excitement throughout this opening chapter is palpable. As he lines out his two-year effort to live a life of pure self-reliance and self-reflection in the woods surrounding Walden Pond, he giddily details the questions and dismissals he immediately began receiving from friends and neighbors. How would he eat? Wouldn’t he be desperately lonely? Some even scoff at the notion that his undertaking is even remotely difficult: someone sarcastically asks him how many young children he’ll be supporting during his time in the woods.

Ignoring the criticisms, he begins building himself a house on land located about two miles away from his family home, given to him by Emerson in exchange for a little manual labor. In explaining the “economy” of his adventure, Thoreau lists the entirety of his expenditures over the duration of the experiment. He spends around 28 dollars on the house, the equivalent of a little under 900 dollars in today’s money. With the house built, he is free to live in it and spend his days doing whatever he pleases for the indefinite future.

Thoreau spends a vast deal of the chapter discussing modern society and its impact on the world. It’s difficult to imagine in the age of cell phones and megamalls, but lots of people in the mid-1800s were already gravely concerned that simple living and self-sufficiency were being supplanted by rampant materialism and the thoughtless destruction of nature. Thoreau makes it pretty clear that he’s got a rabid disdain for work, at least in the traditional sense:

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

The main crux of Thoreau’s argument, though coded in the esoteric language of the time, is simple: working longer and harder to afford luxuries is entirely soul-crushing, while casting aside everything but the simplest needs (a home, food, clothes and fuel) is a surefire path to true freedom. Thoreau equates the slavery of labor with African-American slavery, which he was also firmly against.

“The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot.”

It should be noted that Thoreau never claimed to be 100% self-sufficient. Indeed, he built a house on borrowed land, occasionally borrowed tools, and wasn’t isolated in the strictest sense of the word; he had many visitors and regularly visited Concord, a town near Walden Pond. He also kept several things, which could be considered luxuries: stationary, a lamp and several books. Thoreau was not an extremist.

Where I lived, and What I Lived For

“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.”

Thoreau begins this chapter by recounting his furtive attempts to purchase a farm. He had made a catalog in his mind of every conceivable piece of property within twelve miles of his family home, and he had even visited a few. He tells us that he eventually did buy one, though the owner’s wife quickly forced him to change his mind about the deal. The owner felt so bad that he offered Thoreau 10 dollars as an apology, but Thoreau refused.

“For a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.”

Instead, he flashes forward to the move-in date at his new home: July 4th, 1845. He assures the reader that moving to Walden on America’s Independence Day is just a coincidence, but the claim seems dubious. Coincidence or not, the significance of that day is certainly understood by him. He is officially the true owner of all that surrounds him, completely free to live life on his own terms. He is overjoyed.

His descriptions of his new surroundings are downright poetic. His appreciation for the pond is intense. He takes particular note of the birds that he can hear in the woods, but not in his family home just a couple miles away: the wood thrush, the scarlet tanager, the field sparrow and the whip-poor-will are just a few of the new songbirds be enjoys.

“I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them.”

Thoreau describes waking up early each morning and bathing in the pond, not just for cleanliness, but as a kind of religious ritual, a daily spiritual rebirth. He then segues into a diatribe about workers and the exhaustion of civilized life, revealing that, in his mind, only a select few people are awake enough to lead a divine, poetic life. Mostly, they’re only awake enough to labor mindlessly.

“To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?”

He turns his eye to a pair of modern day conveniences: the post office and the daily newspaper. He finds nothing much of value in either one, matter-of-factly concluding that only one or two of the many letters he’s received in his entire life were worth the value of the postage it cost to send them.

He was even more scornful of newspapers:

“If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter—we never need read of another.”

Though he’s subtle about it, Thoreau also works in a few digs at Christianity. He thinks that it’s probably a little premature to conclude that man’s purpose on earth is to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

Reading

“Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and not be cheated in trade; but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing.”

Thoreau mentions that he’s kept Homer’s immortal classic The Iliad on a table for the entire summer, barely reading a page of it while he put the finishing touches on his house and tended to his small bean field. He tells us that he’s kept himself working hard by using the eventual reading time as a reward for a job well done, allowing himself to read only “trashy” travel books until the work is done.

He then begins yet another diatribe, this one a little harder to swallow, especially in modern times: he suggests that everyone should learn to read the classic, ancient books of the world in the language they were originally written. Anything else, to Thoreau’s mind, would be cheating.

“The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them.”

Thoreau goes on to insult the surrounding town of Concord, informing the reader that even the most educated of its citizens are little more than simpletons, unfamiliar with the awe-inspiring majesty of great literature:

By the end of the chapter, Thoreau is pretty much boiling over with manic anger. It’s an effective reminder that Thoreau is just a tourist in the woods; he’s a Harvard-educated man who has chosen a temporary poverty as a philosophical experiment.

“I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that will not advance either of us. We need to be provoked—goaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot.”

It’s this pretentiousness that confuses readers: how can a man argue for the simplification of life to its barest essentials while simultaneously belittling the townspeople for their apparent disregard for higher education? Thoreau doesn’t provide any answers, except to say that instead of creating a small noble class of intellectuals, we should instead strive for “noble villages of men.”

Sounds

“Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.”

Thoreau begins this chapter by imploring his readers to not devote themselves entirely to books, but to also remain vigilant for your own truths, to be glimpsed with your eyes. In essence, he wishes the world to not be just students, but also creators and recorders of reality.

He describes his first summer, as before, as being largely free from reading as a pastime. While he was busy tending to his beans, he would also occasionally just sit in his doorway for hours, wasting the day away with daydreams. In his stillness, he says, he learned quite a bit more than books could ever have taught him, saying that he grew “like corn in the night” during that summer.

The absence of any sense of schedule or rigidity was freeing to Thoreau in innumerable ways. His ability to shrug off an entire day, not as wasted, but as spent in a sort-of spiritual reverie, was essential to his objective.

His stillness is soon interrupted by the Fitchburg Railroad, a daily commuter train that runs alongside Walden Pond. The train reminds Thoreau that he is not exactly away from it all, and progress marcher forward with or without his participation in it. He is, at times, accepting of commerce, but he worries that too much attention paid to business might subvert the better qualities of humanity.

"I will not have my eyes put out and my ears spoiled by its smoke, and steam, and hissing."

At night, Thoreau can hear the screaming of owls. He compares the sound to a passionate wail that men would make, if only they had the courage. Though the sounds are jarring, he is thankful for the owls and all of the other animals that are now a part of his constant personal soundtrack:

“They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. All day the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp, where the single spruce stands hung with usnea lichens, and small hawks circulate above, and the chickadee lisps amid the evergreens, and the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath; but now a more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of Nature there.”

Solitude

“To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude,”

In this chapter, the reader finds Thoreau, despite the railroad incident from the last chapter, fully engaged with nature. He is so enraptured and overjoyed at the natural wonder of his surroundings that he has difficulty putting it into words. He concludes that nobody could ever be truly depressed while surrounded by nature, assuming that the person still has all five senses.

He then recounts a statement one of the naysayers had made to him:

"I should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially."

He finds the idea ridiculous now, as he feels more at peace and at home with nature than ever. He believes that nature is, in fact, a superior society to the nearby human one. He maintains that he is no lonelier than Walden Pond itself, which is to say not at all.

He is deeply happy to be mostly free from the gossip of Concord, which he believes to be poisonous to the soul. Instead, he spends time with an old man who reportedly dug Walden Pond and an older woman with an herb garden who tells him fables. He doesn’t say whether these two people actually exist, but he hints that they might not. He says that the man is thought to be dead but that no one can find the body and that the woman is invisible to “most” people. He could be using these imaginary people to stave off the loneliness, fear, and boredom of winter in the nighttime:

“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.”

Visitors

“I think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither.”

While Thoreau is somewhat isolated during his time at Walden Pond, he spent a lot of time entertaining visitors to his humble cabin. In fact, he describes an occasion during which his small space held upwards of twenty-five people. He has three chairs in his home, one for solitude, two for friendship, and three for society. Thoreau attributes some of the better conversations he has in the woods with the obvious fact that it takes a greater effort to reach him there, thus cutting down on the unimportant, everyday conversations that society usually forces on people:

“Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are.”

Thoreau goes on to discuss Alex Therien, the Canadian woodchopper he often visits with. In him, Thoreau believes, he has found the closest possible approximation of the ideal type of man. He is quiet and contemplative, though hardworking. He lives an incredibly simple existence, which Thoreau, somewhat cruelly, calls an “animal life.” He remarks that, despite his lack of education, he has a mind as deep as Walden Pond itself.

In his detailed summary of Therien’s attributes, he takes pains to point out his simplicity, and while he’s ostensibly complimenting him, he also seems to make it obvious that the woodchopper is just a touch beneath him.

“I did not know whether he was as wise as Shakespeare or as simply ignorant as a child, whether to suspect him of a fine poetic consciousness or of stupidity. A townsman told me that when he met him sauntering through the village in his small close-fitting cap, and whistling to himself, he reminded him of a prince in disguise.”

He describes many other visitors to his cabin. He tells of people asking for a glass of water as an excuse for calling on him, and of Thoreau directing them to drink from the pond, as he did. He mentions entertaining what he describes as “half-wits” in his home, forcing them to exercise what little verbal skill they possessed. Some of his visitors, he laments, were “objects of charity”, people who refused to help themselves. Thoreau had no patience for this kind of person, saying that he requires his visitors to not be starving. Many of these people, Thoreau says, didn’t know when a visit was over.

Thoreau mentions, in passing, that one of the men he entertained was a runaway slave. He quickly mentions that he helped the man on his way to Canada. Thoreau’s main take-away from his experience with visitors is that women and children are far more fascinated with the woods and the pond than any of the men he encounters.

The Bean Field

This chapter marks a return to the meticulous nature of the beginning of the book. Thoreau gives an incredibly detailed overview of his experience with farming while at Walden. He sells his crop for $23.44, (around $697.00 in today’s money). His total expenditures were around $14.72, ($437.00 today), leaving him with a profit of $8.71 ½, (roughly $259.00 today).

Despite the (relatively) handsome profit that he makes for his effort, Thoreau insists that his main purpose was not money, or even sustenance. He wanted only to prove his own self-discipline. Thoreau opines that the true aim of farming shouldn’t be to cultivate food, but rather to cultivate the farmer himself.

While planting, he is somewhat surprised to discover that the area he’d chosen to cultivate was not as unused and nutrient-rich as he’d previously thought. He finds arrowheads and pieces of pottery, evidence that Indians had already tended the land, long ago. He refers to them as the “ashes of unchronicled nations.” He describes the rains that come and help his crops to grow, and the dangerous woodchucks who threaten it.

Later, he tells us that nature is as it should be, indifferent to the success or failure of mankind’s crops, just as mankind is indifferent to the needs of the woodchuck. He advises farmers, somewhat naively, to pay less attention to whether their crops grow or not:

“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 labor 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.”

The Village

Thoreau begins this chapter by describing his routine: after doing the day’s chores, he will usually take a second bath in Walden Pond. Most days, he’d then head for Concord (which he refers to as the village) to hear some gossip. He describes his trips in much the same language he uses to describe his nature walks, which serves to emphasize and illustrate his disconnect from society:

“As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle.”

He describes the main thoroughfare of the town as a gauntlet, one that he is proud to run without disturbing or being disturbed. He does his best to avoid engaging in any commerce whatsoever, but he does occasionally purchase a few items.

One day, toward the end of summer, Thoreau heads to town in order to procure a shoe from a local cobbler. While nearing his destination, he was arrested and put into the jail. Charged with failing to pay taxes, he was released the next day. He reasons that he will not respect the authority of any government who would allow slavery to thrive; subjugating men (and women) who Thoreau felt were at least equal, if not superior to their owners. He quickly points out that, though he knew he’d willfully broken the law, he did not begin his experiment as a way to escape jail:

“I had gone down to the woods for other purposes. 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.”

After his release, he cheerfully picks up the shoe from the cobbler and heads home. He mentions that he takes a special pride in being able to find his way to and from the woods on even the darkest of nights. He tells a story of instructing two visitors to his home on how to get back to the village, and then discovering that they’d spent the better part of the night wandering around the woods, soaking wet with rain. Thoreau marvels that some men can’t even find their way around the village in the dark.

He ends the chapter by describing the complete lack of security that he maintains for his home. He has no locks to speak of, but he’d never been robbed, even during a couple of extended absences. He mentions that only one item went missing, a particularly fancy-looking volume of the works of Homer, but he suspected that whoever borrowed it had simply forgotten to return it. He believes that materialism breeds robbery, and that the solution to the problem is obvious:

“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.”

The Ponds

This chapter opens with Thoreau, growing tired of the village and all its gossip, heading west in search of new areas in which to wander. He describes picking and eating huckleberries and blueberries on Fair Haven Hill, and he laments the fact that most people who think they’re eating those fruits aren’t; the true flavor will apparently disappear shortly after picking, and consequently, “a huckleberry never reaches Boston.”

Thoreau mentions an old man who is mostly deaf, who he would fish with. He recalls that their discourse, though completely silent, was more pleasant and intellectually satisfying than if it had been spoken. They enjoyed a quiet harmony, he concludes.

Thoreau then speaks in glowing terms about the surroundings he’s come to know. Though Walden Pond is small and, to the untrained eye, pretty much unremarkable, he is fascinated by its depth and purity. He explains the variation in color (green to blue) as if he’s describing the way diamonds might look in a jeweler’s loop. Thoreau says that people often claim that Walden Pond is bottomless

The water, when swimming in it, is so clear that the bottom can be seen from a depth of about twenty-five or thirty feet, he says. He recalls a time, years past, when he had been cutting holes in the ice during winter, trying to catch pickerel. As he stepped back on the shore, he clumsily tossed his axe back onto the ice, sending it flying into one of the holes. He lay down on the ice to watch it, twenty-five feet down, crystal clear and swaying in the gentle current. He marveled at it for a few moments before retrieving it.

He ponders the origin of the name Walden, and decides that it could be named as such because the pond is man-made and “walled-in” with beautiful white stones. He remarks that the surrounding hills have the same stones.

Thoreau then gives a short history of the rise and fall of the water line. Giving Walden Pond an almost human character, he insists that the pond rises and falls in order to keep the trees and bushes from growing too close to its shore. After all, Thoreau surmises, the pond has an inalienable right to a shore.

Thoreau repeats a tale told to him by the oldest people he knows, who describe being told the story as children. According to the story, long ago, in ancient times, a group of Indians were having a pow-wow on a nearby hill that was incredibly tall. They used so much profanity that God shook the hill and made it sink until it was the deep pond that Thoreau now lives near. The story concludes with only a single Indian survivor: an old squaw named Walden, who the pond was eventually named after:

“It has been conjectured that when the hill shook these stones rolled down its side and became the present shore. It is very certain, at any rate, that once there was no pond here, and now there is one.”

Baker Farm and Higher Laws

Thoreau is once again roaming the countryside, waxing poetic about pine groves, birch trees, and hemlock. He refers to these individual examples of nature as his shrines, which he visits in the summer and the winter. He describes accidentally standing in the middle of a rainbow, the dazzling colors of which filled everything within his sight. He describes it as a lake of rainbow light, which he bathes in “like a dolphin.” Then, he describes walking along the railroad tracks and pondering the halo effect he could see around him on the ground:

“As I walked on the railroad causeway, I used to wonder at the halo of light around my shadow, and would fain fancy myself one of the elect. One who visited me declared that the shadows of some Irishmen before him had no halo about them, that it was only natives that were so distinguished.”

He then begins to make his way to Fair Haven to fish. While walking to his destination, he nears Baker Farm and reminisces about his possible interest in living there before settling on the idea of living in Walden. Suddenly, it begins to thunder so loudly that it overtakes him. He seeks shelter in the nearest hut, a home occupied by a man named John Field.

Field, alongside his wife and children, take him in and give him shelter from the storm. Rather than gratefully accept their kindness, what follows is a mostly cruel description of the family’s poverty and character. Their youngest child is recalled by Thoreau variously as “cone-headed” and a “poor starveling brat.” John Fields’ wife is described as having a round, greasy face. While he describes John Field himself as honest and hard-working, he also calls him shiftless:

“I tried to help him with my experience, telling him that he was one of my nearest neighbors, and that I too, who came a-fishing here, and looked like a loafer, was getting my living like himself; that I lived in a tight, light, and clean house, which hardly cost more than the annual rent of such a ruin as his commonly amounts to.”

Thoreau lectures him about his use of coffee, tea, milk, and meat. He tells him that he’s wasting his life, working too hard to provide his family things they do not truly need. He imagines that they are taking in his words and wondering if they are smart enough to follow through with his ideas. Once the rain lets up, Thoreau leaves, heading for the river. Later, he notices that John Field has does the same.

Thoreau recounts that Field couldn’t catch a fish to save his life and that Thoreau himself had already taken several fish from the pond. They switch seats, and find that Field might just be unlucky.

While walking home in the dark, Thoreau encounters a woodchuck. He is suddenly gripped with an overwhelming desire to eat it. He contemplates the dual-sided nature of humanity: the savage and the noble. He believes that hunting is essential as a rite of passage into adulthood but that truly spiritual people should eventually leave it behind.

"Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome."

Thoreau tells the reader that he’d sold his gun before entering the woods and that he feels it immoral to shoot birds and game. He is struggling, however, with the notion of fishing. He’s always been a skilled fisherman, but he’s suddenly reluctant to eat fish, thinking it not particularly nourishing or clean. He is leaning towards vegetarianism, philosophically.

He eschews alcohol and doesn’t drink coffee or tea. He is beginning to believe in a sustenance only diet, eating only the simplest, easiest foods. He’s doing this, he says, to avoid indulgence and “animalistic” behavior. While he doesn’t always succeed at using his higher instincts, he believes that the pursuit of nobility is just as good as attaining it.

Brute Neighbors

"Shall I go to heaven or a-fishing?"

Thoreau begins this chapter with an interesting dialogue between a hermit (Thoreau) and a poet (Ellery Channing). It’s an amalgam, presumably, of many of their conversations. The poet meditates on the eloquence of clouds while the hermit, ever practical, is more concerned with fishing. At the end of their day, the poet regrets that he hasn’t caught any fish.

Thoreau then tells of the mice that “haunted” his house. Not the type commonly found in Concord proper, one of them makes a nest underneath the house before he’s even finished it. He assumes that these woodland creatures have never seen a man before, but nevertheless, they make themselves at home, eating Thoreau’s crumbs, climbing over his shoes, and eventually even climbing on Thoreau himself. Thoreau mentions that he fed one mouse a small piece of cheese. He seems happy to play with his “brute neighbors.”

In addition to the rodents that share his home, Thoreau frequently encounters birds; a phoebe, a robin, and a family of partridges. He jokingly refers to them as his hens. He sees ducks and otters, and even housecats. He occasionally encounters raccoons. He is astounded and impressed by their ability to live off the humans in Concord while effectively hiding from them.

One day, Thoreau notices a large black ant fighting with much smaller red ant. Upon closer inspection, Thoreau finds an epic battle between two warring armies. Though the black ants dwarf the diminutive red ants, the black ants are far outnumbered. It reminds Thoreau of human war. He realizes that this is the only real battle he has ever seen. He removes a few of the ants with a wood chip and takes them home. He watches the small skirmish under a microscope. Two of the ants are decapitated. He lets the last one go.

House-Warming

Thoreau goes out in search of fruits and nuts, only to marvel at how much of it has been taken from the area for commercial use. Still, he finds all the berries he can eat. While walking, he begins to notice the leaves changing; a surefire signal that winter is coming. He heads to the other side of the pond where the sun is still a little bit warm. The wasps, he tells us, begin to come inside his house, looking for a place to hibernate. He takes it as a compliment and decides that it’s time to join them.

In the waning days of summer, Thoreau tells us that he began to study masonry, so that he could build a proper chimney for his cabin before the harsh winter comes. He is helped by his friend Ellery Channing (referred to, simply, as ‘a poet’) who stays with him for two weeks. He speaks of the importance of fireplaces. To him, they are the spiritual center of a home, maybe even more important than the home itself:

“The chimney is to some extent an independent structure, standing on the ground, and rising through the house to the heavens; even after the house is burned it still stands sometimes, and its importance and independence are apparent.”

By now, Walden Pond has begun to freeze. Thoreau takes walks along its surface, coated now with a thin layer of ice. He can still see the shifting water underneath his feet, and he marvels at it. The ice also impresses him, and he watches air bubbles rise to the surface and mingle with the already-frozen bits.

Thoreau begins to gather wood. He maintains a deep and abiding love for it, and the warmth it provides. He enjoys gathering the wood, which he believes links him with eternity; no matter what new technology comes around, people will always need and appreciate wood:

“It is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even in this age and in this new country, a value more permanent and universal than that of gold. After all our discoveries and inventions no man will go by a pile of wood. It is as precious to us as it was to our Saxon and Norman ancestors.”

Thoreau reflects on the nature of fire, how it warms the poverty-stricken and the unbelievably rich in the exact same way. Everyone, he claims, looks for faces in the fire. It’s a spiritual imperative. Somewhat morosely, Thoreau says that every man on earth would die if there was another ice age.

Former Inhabitants and Winter Visitors

“For human society I was obliged to conjure up the former occupants of these woods. Within the memory of many of my townsmen the road near which my house stands resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which border it were notched and dotted here and there with their little gardens and dwellings.”

Winter has fully descended on Walden Pond, and though he tries to remain as cheerful as he was in the summertime, Thoreau quickly begins to describe the winter desolation of the woods. Though he describes the constant snowstorms as “merry” and his isolated cabin “cheerful”, he has almost no visitors during the winter, and few passersby. He remarks that even the owls have fallen silent, before reminiscing about the former inhabitants of the woods.

He speaks of the area he now resides in, and how, in his memory at least, it had been more densely populated in years past. He remembers many of the earlier inhabitants, a majority of them black. A staunch abolitionist, he recounts their tales, lending the former slaves and dirt-poor settlers a dignity that was often lacking in his time.

Cato Ingraham was a hardworking former slave whose land was taken away by a young, white land speculator. Zilpha was an elderly clothing maker with a gorgeous voice. He tells a story of the Breeds’ house, burnt to the ground by children. Thoreau, alongside the fire brigade, had tried to save it, but eventually let it burn as it was entirely worthless, from a monetary standpoint. Thoreau is pleased to note that the well hadn’t been consumed in the fire, and could be used again someday.

Seemingly bored with the world inside his own mind, Thoreau still takes walks around the countryside. Though he mostly sees a snow covered landscape, he occasionally runs into an animal or two. He comes upon an owl, sitting still on a tree branch. Initially, Thoreau sees the owl as inactive as the rest of the countryside, but upon closer inspection, he spooks it and watches as it springs to life, disappearing through the pines.

Thoreau does receive a few visitors ion the depths of winter, including Amos Alcott, “long-headed” farmer, his closest friend Ellery Channing, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, on whose land Thoreau is living, though this is never mentioned in the text. These visitors are as welcome as ever, but few and far between. Thoreau spent most of the winter waiting, in accordance with Hindu scripture, for a visitor hat never comes.

“The Vishnu Purana says, ‘The householder is to remain at eventide in his courtyard as long as it takes to milk a cow, or longer if he pleases, to await the arrival of a guest.’ I often performed this duty of hospitality, waited long enough to milk a whole herd of cows, but did not see the man approaching from the town.”

Winter Animals

Winter continues unabated for Thoreau. All of the ponds have frozen over, giving him new shortcuts through which to explore the chilly landscape. Given a new perspective by standing in the middle of each pond, he can see much farther than he’s ever been able to. He stores the information he gathers deep within his mind, hoping to use it when spring arrives. He takes a shortcut to Lincoln, and is able to get to the lecture hall without passing a single home along the way. He is able to travel in much the same easy manner as the birds fly.

He hears the lonely sound of an owl hooting at night, but he estimates that it’s incredibly far away. He hears the close by honking of a goose, and marvels at the discord between them. Mostly, he hears the ice cascading in the pond and the cracking of frost on the ground outside his door. He also hears foxes searching for prey in the middle of the night, howling “demonically.” He makes a study of them:

“They seemed to me to be rudimental, burrowing men, still standing on their defense, awaiting their transformation. Sometimes one came near to my window, attracted by my light, barked a vulpine curse at me, and then retreated.”

Red Squirrels run along his roof, serving as a wake-up call when dawn arrives. They come and go all day long, eating the pieces of sweet corn that Thoreau provides. He marvels at their quick, fluttery movements, likening them to a dancing girl searching for an audience. Chickadees come to his doorstep to eat the crumbs that Thoreau has placed there.

The jays that soon arrive fare a little worse. Thoreau gives them corn to eat, which they happily take, but they eat pieces too large for their throats. They choke, and spend considerable time freeing the pieces from their mouths, only to attack them and swallow them again.

He encounters a man from Lexington who is searching the woods for his lost dog. He’d followed his tracks to the area surrounding Thoreau’s cabin. Thoreau attempts to help him, but is constantly interrupted by the man’s questions about what Thoreau himself is doing in the woods:

“He had lost a dog, but found a man.”

Thoreau then tells of another hunter who told him a fascinating story: A man by the name of Sam Nutting used to travel around these parts, hunting bear and exchanging their skins for rum. He also reportedly hunted moose, grey fox, deer, and the occasional wildcat. Thoreau notes that none of these creatures have been seen in the area for quite some time.

The Pond in Winter

"I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what — how — when — where?"

Thoreau wakes up after a long winter’s sleep with a new determination to appreciate the natural beauty of winter. He begins his daily ritual, axe in hand, of searching out water in Walden Pond. The pond, he says, is frozen solid: a foot of snow and a foot of ice beneath that. He cuts a hole through it and bends down to drink. He sees the fish, still going about their lives beneath the changed surface, presumably unaware.

“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”

Thoreau is joined by a group of primitive fishermen. He is amazed at their ability to catch pickerel. Later, he decides to measure the depth of the pond once and for all, to either dispel or prove some people’s assertions that Walden is bottomless. He uses fishing line attached to a stone and sinks it to around 100 feet. He does this over and over again, primitively mapping the shape of the pond. He finds that it corresponds pretty well with the surrounding landscape. He does the same at the nearby White Pond. He then philosophizes on the nature of infinity, and why people need to believe in the idea.

The next winter, a hundred men arrive at Walden Pond with farming tools. They are there to extract the ice and ship it to other places. He watches as the men, who he describes as Irishmen with Yankee overseers, arrive daily to do the work. He finds out that fewer than twenty-five percent of what is taken from the pond will actually reach its destination. At first, he is upset at what he considers the theft of Walden’s “skin.” He is heartened, however, to think that his beautiful, clean water might mix with the waters of the mighty Ganges. The men continue to work for sixteen days before departing.

“Thus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well.”

Spring

After the long winter spent, primarily, alone with his thoughts and observations, spring finally begins to arrive in the woods. Thoreau makes a meticulous accounting of the moment when the ponds begin to melt, starting with temperature readings that began in winter. By March, the shallow part of Walden Pond is thirty-six degrees. He describes the melting process as a sun-assisted miracle: the sun shines on the top of the ice, melting it a little; the sun shines through the ice to the bottom, melting it a little more; then the melting creates air bubbles that rise to the top, creating a honeycomb pattern before dissolving completely. It’s a slow process, but one that Thoreau finds endlessly fascinating. He spends hours watching the ponds transform.

Thoreau observes that the entire yearly weather cycle takes place every day (on a smaller scale) within a pond. The morning, with its new warmth, represents spring. Midday stands in for the heat of summer. Autumn is represented by the cooling off in the evening. The long night, he likens to winter.

The pond begins to “thunder” occasionally, though Thoreau can’t make any predictions as to when it’s most likely to occur. The noise is caused by giant blocks of ice losing their shape and melting down into the clean and pure water of Walden Pond. Fishermen, Thoreau says, can’t catch anything to save their lives during this time. The fish are scared and reluctant to bite anything at all.

Thoreau is on the lookout for spring, keeping his eyes and ear open for the telltale signs. The daylight begins to last a little longer, and he begins to hear the faint, distant sounds of bluebirds and sparrows. Suddenly, everything seems to be melting and he notices the sand of the shore moving with little streams of water. He begins to feel the renewal within himself, and his prose becomes flowery again:

“The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit—not a fossil earth, but a living earth.”

The first glimpses of wild grasses and plants fills Thoreau with joy, and he describes the sight of them as more appealing and exciting than the summertime, when the landscape is fully covered in them. Their absence creates longing, and their slow return is more appreciated than if it they were a constant presence.

The beginning days of spring also sees the red squirrels begin to make a nest under his home. They flow underneath his feet, two at a time, chirping and laughing. He argues with them, congenially, but they will not give him much quiet time.

By late April, he returns to fishing. He watches a hawk gracefully diving and rising over the pond, as if playing. By May, the oak, hickory, and maple trees are full and lush, giving the landscape a new brightness. He begins to see loons, whip-poor-wills, and thrashers around the pond again. The “sulfur showers” of pollen begin again, proof that not only has spring arrived, but summer is just around the corner.

Thoreau tells us that he left Walden for good on September 6th, 1847.

Conclusion

*note: Thoreau took several years to write the manuscript that became Walden, finally publishing it in 1854, a full seven years after he completed his experiment.

Now that Thoreau has left the woods, he’s gathered together his thoughts and begins to describe what he’s learned. He begins his concluding thoughts by noting that doctors, in their infinite wisdom, often recommend a change of air and scenery to sick people. While Thoreau was not exactly sick, he’s certainly much improved and irrevocably changed by his time in the woods.

Thoreau knows that most people cannot give up their lives and change the scenery at will, but he firmly believes that a person is always capable of changing and exploring their internal scenery. This, Thoreau says, can’t be prescribed by a doctor, but is equally valuable. Inner growth is much more beneficial than mere travel.

In detailing his reasons for leaving the woods, he recalls his time there as just one of a series of different lives he is meant to live. He had simply run out of time for that one. He laments that he may have created a path for others to follow, rather than his stated goal of convincing others to follow their own paths. Embarking on a journey of self-discovery is the highest of callings, but the ability to reshape your world into what your heart desires is divine:

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

Thoreau goes on to ask his readers to not pay too much attention to the past. In fact, this nostalgic pining for the “good old days” is the surest path to nowhere: you can’t move forward efficiently while looking backwards. Thoreau believes that every person on earth has the potential for greatness hidden somewhere inside of them. The point of life is to bring it out, to shine a light on it, to give it a long and fruitful summer. He also rails against negativity. Bemoaning your station in life is a pointless exercise, as the world doesn’t care one way or another if you appreciate it. Negativity hurts nobody but you:

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise.”

He also exhorts his readers to stop paying attention to material wealth and prosperity. He recommends selling our fancy belongings. They are only temporary illusions and bring nobody true happiness:

“The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse as brightly as from the rich man's abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see, but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”

He describes sitting at an elegant table and being given the finest foods and wine in massive amounts. He is sad to note that, despite the abundance on display, there was no truth, no sincerity to be found there. So he leaves hungry for conversation of a deeper substance than where the wine came from and how much it cost. He remarks that a man in his neighborhood who lives in a tree would’ve been more suitable company.

Conformity, according to Thoreau, is another trap. A person who is afraid to march to the beat of their own drummer is nothing more than a slave, a puppet without a hand, empty inside. He tells us not to live in our restless, nervous, bustling, trivial times, but rather to stand or sit thoughtfully while watching it all go by.

Thoreau ends Walden on a note of optimism. He truly believes that all people are capable of shaking the confines of their lives and achieving something greater:

“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.”