Henry David Thoreau

by Robert Browman
A Thousand Little Cuts

Monday was birthday of the man who wrote, "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." That’s noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau.

During his life, Thoreau wrote more than 20 books on a variety of topics, but he is best known for Walden, which he published in 1854. The book chronicles the two years Thoreau spent at his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson’s cabin near Walden Pond near Concord, Mass.

Many see his experiment at Walden Pond as a radical rejection of society in favor of a natural, wilderness life. In reality, Thoreau’s beliefs were more practical and moderate than extreme. The cabin at Walden wasn’t located deep in the wilderness. It was just on the edge of his hometown, not far from his family.

He didn’t entirely reject human society, nor did he completely embrace the wild. He condemned mankind's destruction of nature, and he sought to find what he felt was a proper balance between the natural world and the needs of man.