Prologue

My name is Jim MacArthur, and this blog is primarily for me.  But also, I hope, for my students at Tolland High School, and possibly my colleagues there and their students, and maybe even strangers from who-knows-where brought here by The Google.  [WARNING:  I am a Thoreau enthusiast, not an expert. I've read some HDT, I've read a couple of biographies.  But count what you find here as my impressions, and something less than facts.]

In April of 2011, I finally visited Walden Pond.  I had lived within two hours of Concord for most of my life, and had been an admirer of Thoreau for many years, but somehow I had never made it there.  To be honest, it's not that much of a pond.  But it's Walden.

While I was there, I bought a copy of selections from Thoreau's journals, and read it over the summer vacation.  Along the way, I underlined my favorite passages.  (I'm told you can effectively do the same thing on a Kindle, but ink on paper feels more intimate to me.)  I did that just for me, because I wanted to engage the text (and HDT) more closely.  Only later did I get the idea that I should take my notes into the classroom.

I just meant to take a few highlights, but I ended up with seven pretty tightly-packed pages.  I tried to go easy on my classes, so I asked them to read the packet -- I'm sure that some of them did -- pick and five favorite passages, and then respond to one.  What I really wanted to do was to go through each and every one of them with the class, at some length.  But if you've ever been in front of a high school classroom, you know how successful that would be.  (And if you've never been, the answer is: "not very".)

Hence, this blog.  It will give me the leisure and the luxury of saying as much as I want to, and only those who are interested -- if there will be any -- need get involved.

I begin this effort on July 4th, 2012.  It may well be two years, two months and two days before I finish.  (If I ever do.   I see that I have 66 small commentaries to write after this one.)  My intention is to expand upon Thoreau's ideas and observations in order to bring Thoreau to life for the novice reader.  Nothing would please me more than to have others join in the discussion with their own views and opinions.

Near the site of Thoreau's cabin there is a pile of stones.  Some, like the one at left, have been painted in advance, and brought some distance, to be left there, in hopes that. . . ?  I'm not sure.  But such an action sanctifies the spot.  You'll see a similar response if you visit HDT's grave in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery nearby in Concord.  Thoreau was a difficult man, and at times an unhappy man.  But there's something about him that touches people to this day.  I'm one.  Maybe you are, too.

Loneliness

March 13, 1841

            How alone must our life be lived!

More Cowbell!

April 4

            That cheap piece of tinkling brass which the farmer hangs about his cow’s neck has been more to me than the tons of metal which are swung in the belfry.

            Thoreau was of course a spiritual man.  But he was not much of a churchgoer, not a fan of institutions at all.  The bells rang on Sunday morning, and the good citizens of Concord dutifully marched to church at the appointed hour -- while HDT was apt to find worship at any one of the twenty-four hours, any day of the week.
           
            The oft-repeated example of this finds Thoreau on his deathbed,  where his aunt asks him "Henry, have you made your peace with God?"  And he replies: "I was not aware that we had quarreled."   

            And as to the sound of the cowbells, Thoreau doubtless appreciated the simple, local labors of the farmer and the ensuing dairy products.  And as to cows, let's not forget that they spend a good deal of their time out of doors, ruminating, meditating -- chewing the cud, so to speak.  That's an animal to admire.



             One more story about HDT and churchbells.  Thoreau's neighbor and mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, is set to give an address at the Concord Unitarian Meeting House to commemorate the abolition of slavery in the West Indies.  There are five or six young men at the meeting house who are reluctant to ring the bell without permission (abolition being a highly controversial topic in 1844).  So Thoreau took it upon himslef -- permission or no -- to ring the churchbell that day.

Transportation

Sept 19, 1841

            It is nice to have been to a place by the way a river went.

            It is at that.  You move along at a nice slow pace and, where Man has not intervened too much, you'll see some beautiful scenery.


            One of Thoreau's books is A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, based on a trip that he took with his beloved brother John.  (The book did not sell well initially, and HDT quipped "I now have a library of 1,000 books -- over 750 of which I wrote myself.")  The Concord River is almost completely flat as it flows through the meadows at Concord -- it drops something like two feet over several miles.  Thoreau built himself a boat -- the Musketaquid (the Indian name for the river), and used it extensively.  He would collect driftwood in it, then haul it back to heat his house.  When the river iced over, he would skate along it.


            HDT eventually sold the Musketaquid to Nathaniel Hawthorne (whom you'll recognize as the author of The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables as well as numerous short stories.)   Although Hawthorne's opinion of Thoreau was decidedly mixed -- he recognized his genius but thought his behavior boorish -- he was is awe of HDT's skill as a boatsman.

Gone Fishin'

June 7, 1851

            One of those gentle, straight-down rainy days, when the rain begins by spotting the cultivated fields as if shaken from a pepperbox; a fishing day, when I see one neighbor after another, having doned his oil-cloth suit, walking or riding past with a fish-pole, having struck work, -- a day and an employment to make philosophers of them all.

            First of all, I love the imagery.  Those first few drops, speckling the sidewalks and driveways (sorry, Henry, that's my world).  And I love the fact that the pace of life is slow enough, and driven enough by the environment, that the farmers can drop their regular work to do a little fishing.  (Still trying to be productive, I suppose, but...).  


             Because whatever it is, a pile of work or a pile of snow, we pride ourselves on our ability to just plow through it.


            Wouldn't you like to be able to call an audible in your day like that?


[Thanks to Old Onliner, who shares this photo of the Rock River in Beloit, Wisconsin, with us through his Flickr feed.]

Do You Remember?

July 16, 1851

            In youth, before I lost any of my senses, I can remember well that I was all alive, and inhabited my body with inexpressible satisfaction; both its weariness and its refreshment were sweet to me.

            It's a sad fact of life.  As we get older, we get more blasé about life.  It's probably necessary, so that as an adult, you can better tolerate the ups and downs of life.  Look at how upset a young child gets over a broken toy, or the loss of a pet.  Imagine if we carried those volatile emotions throughout life.  How could we live with all the tragedy and suffering in the world?

            But the downside is our joys are lessened, too.  Even our best days aren't what they used to be.



            Below is a selection from William Wordsworth's poem "Intimations of Immortality".  Wordsworth is one of the English Romantic Poets, a group that preceded the Transcendentalists and shared a lot of their philosophy.

        V

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Observancy

Aug. 5, 1851

            The question is not what you look at, but what you see.

            Some people think that Thoreau never left Concord.  But that's not true.  He traveled extensively in New England and wrote about it: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Cape Cod, Maine Woods.  He visited Canada, New York City, and near the end of his life the Midwest.  But it is true that his main focus was the fields and woods of Concord.  And of his locality, you could say, he made a thorough study.  (Sorry.  Couldn't resist.)

            A local farmer would tell the story, in a deprecating manner, of seeing HDT in the morning standing by a mud pool by the river.  At noon he was still there, and he was still there after dinner.  Finally the farmer ask him, in exasperation

"Da-a-vid Henry [Thoreau's given name], what air you doing?"  And he didn't turn his head and he didn't look at me.  He kept on lookin' at that pond, and he said, as if he was thinking about the stars in the heavens, "Mr. Murray, I'm a-studying -- the habits -- of the bullfrog!"  And there that darned fool had been standin' -- the livelong day -- a-studyin' -- the habits -- of the bull-frog!"

In an era where scientists tended to study animals by shooting them, Thoreau wanted to seem them live, as part of their larger environment.  And he did that by watching carefully and closely things that other people entirely disregarded as unimportant.


            There's always enough time.  It's just a matter of setting your priorities in the right order.  That's the hard part.