Walden Wasn’t Thoreau’s Masterpiece

Thoreau was deeply affected by the rhythm of the natural world, and his urgent anticipation of renewal is everywhere. His moods, he said, were “periodical” and “the seasons and all their changes are in me.” He worried in mid-August about winter: “How early in the year it begins to be late.” And then in late October, it was almost as if he had to remind himself of the beauty of scarlet oaks’ fiery foliage in order to escape his impending winter melancholy: “Look at one completely changed from green to bright dark scarlet—every leaf, as if it had been dipped into a scarlet dye, between you and the sun. Was this not worth waiting for?” When the darkness arrived, his mood sank, and on a cold mid-November afternoon, he wrote:

The landscape is barren of objects—the trees being leafless—and so little light in the sky for variety. Such a day as will almost oblige a man to eat his own heart. A day in which you must hold on to life by your teeth. You can hardly ruck up any skin on nature’s bones. The sap is down—she won’t peel … Truly a hard day, hard times these. Not a mosquito left. Not an insect to hum. Crickets gone into winter quarters. Friends long since gone there—and you left to walk on frozen ground, with your hands in your pockets.

Yet even this entry shows how he considered himself an integral part of the natural world, the ecological community—a lonely traveler missing his old friends from summer. There is nothing reminiscent here of the haughty and sanctimonious Thoreau who is folded into the pages of Walden. In his journal, the punctilious scientist revealed himself as an observer whose soul was open to immediate connection with the big messy web of life: The sounds, colors, and smells of the seasons triggered emotions without a need for elaborate explanations. Nature, he wrote in January 1852, “is a plain writer, uses few gestures, does not add to her verbs, uses few adverbs, uses no expletives.” He aspired to do the same.

Thoreau wondered whether anything he ever wrote could be better than his journal, comparing his words in those pages to flowers that were freely growing, not transplanted or rearranged:

I do not know but thoughts written down thus in a journal might be printed in the same form with greater advantage—than if the related ones were brought together into separate essays. They are now allied to life—& are seen by the reader not to be far fetched—It is more simple—less artful—I feel that in the other case I should have no proper frame for my sketches. Mere facts & names & dates communicate more than we suspect—Whether the flower looks better in the nosegay—than in the meadow where it grew—& we had to wet our feet to get it! Is the scholastic air any advantage?

To me the answer is clear. Thoreau’s love for nature sings off his journal pages in spring. His winter writing slices right into the heart. His entries, day after day, are testimony to the power of renewal and rebirth—and to the importance of harnessing the human sense of wonder to better understand and protect the Earth. In our age of the Anthropocene, as we distance ourselves from the cyclical rhythms of nature, we are disconnecting from our planet. Thoreau’s journal is a reminder of what is at stake.

- More Here