"Explore thyself"
"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 had
not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the
pondside; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is
still quite distinct."
Thoreau ends Walden by admonishing us to live
our lives fully, not to fall into ruts or societal traps. He
tells us to explore our inner world, to live fully in the moment, and
to "love your life, poor as it is."
How's that for an upbeat
ending to a quotable but laborious book?
I'd love to hear from
everyone who read part or all of Walden, now that the first book
club read is at its end. What were your overall thoughts?
Did you think Thoreau was a long-winded poser, or a mystic
visionary? Did the book inspire you; if so, to do what?
Personally, I'm ready to move
on from Thoreau and crack open The
Dirty Life, which we'll begin discussing on July 25. For my
college buddies: the husband in The Dirty Life's team is a
graduate of our alma mater, if that's an inducement to join the next
discussion.
As we wait for everyone's
copies of the next book to arrive on interlibrary loan, feel free to
read back over my posts (and reader comments) on Walden's
chapter
1, chapter
2, chapters
3 and 4, chapters
5 and 6, chapters
7 and 8, chapters
9 and 10, chapters
11 and 12, chapters
13 and
14, and chapters
15 and 16. Several of us are subscribed to the comments and
will see contributions you post there, even if they're out of sync.
Or explore more posts by date or by subject.
About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Anna,
I read Walden several years ago. I haven't had much to say as you have worked your way through the book chapter by chapter.
The main take away for me was an encouragement towards voluntary simplicity that is still relevant today, if not more so. If we can reduce our wants and be satisfied with having our basic needs met, we can live without being indebted.
The example detailed in this book is rather extreme. IIRC, he basically lives in a shack in the woods with no running water and bathes in the pond. I'm not ready to give up running water, but perhaps there are things that I could give up that would make my life simpler.
-RDG