The Maine Woods

"Well, the environmental movement had many fathers, and mothers too; but Thoreau was one of the first to put it into words, inspiring people to take further steps toward both preservation of wilderness areas and better conservation of the wild commons. John Muir’s chosen motto for the Sierra Club was: “In Wildness is the preservation of the world.” And that, of course, comes out of one of Thoreau’s essays, ‘Walking.’ Well, Walden is the book written about dwelling, and home, and deep, deep associations with a place that you grew up in. Thoreau tells us his first memory of Walden was being brought there as a child of five, on a family picnic. The book is so deeply layered because there he is again, as an adult, remembering all those years and all the unfolding changes he’d witnessed. Maine Woods is completely different. It’s a strange environment, even an alien environment, for him. And the meaning of it startles him, eludes him—and draws him deeply. So, the first of this book’s three linked essays narrates his first encounter with true deep wildness. And it becomes pivotal. This all occurs during his first full summer at Walden. While trying, and failing, to summit Mount Katahdin, a revelation occurs: he realizes that he’s traversing an ordinary pasture, only this is not a pasture—no human being made this landscape what it is. It’s completely not human, yet to him it feels strangely, uncannily, deeply familiar. Of course, you don’t set up a cabin in such a place. You honour it as sacred, and then you return home. It’s almost a kind of pilgrimage. He was pushing against orthodox Christianity, but you could say that the Maine woods is where he went to meet God. I think so. You see in his journal that walking out into the woods took a different purpose after the death of his brother. He carried with him a sense of pain and outrage and difficulty. Thoreau responded the way many of us do, by asking the deeper questions about God. Is there a higher power? How could God have done this—cut off a vital, flourishing, beloved person in the prime of life. Is there meaning to this? Or is this just some kind of obscene accident? He turned outward to the wider creation, to the natural or non-human world, to try to understand the deeper meaning. Yes, this is a deeply religious impulse. His family was very religious—church-going Congregationalists who, mostly, stayed with the liberal wing as it evolved into the Unitarian Church. Thoreau himself was famously resistant to church-going, and there were complex reasons for that—but ultimately, the formalism of the church didn’t respond to his spiritual need. He had a sense that God was not in a building, not in a group of people. God had to be somewhere, but if not there, where? Thoreau struggled more than Emerson. I think Emerson felt he had the answer, Thoreau wasn’t so sure. He had to fight for it. Yes. I think in a sense he was. Not in the sense of anarchism as ‘no law, no government’ but rather that we are beings who, if force and coercion are rejected, will build free and cooperative institutions responsive to our higher nature. To the degree that we realize this potential, we won’t need government force, militarized police, jails and so forth. Yes, ‘Civil Disobedience’ starts with that famous line—“that government is best which governs least,” which he then kicks up a notch. But actually, he’s quoting the masthead of the U.S. Democratic Review , in which he’d published a couple of essays—that is, he’s citing a mainstream libertarian position in American politics. “He turned outward, to the natural world, to try to understand the deeper meaning” But look what he does next: he takes that sentiment and gives it a twist, turns it inside out by saying what he wants, “speaking practically and as a citizen,” is not no government, but better government. And he adds that that’s exactly the kind of government men will have once they’re ready for it: true democracy, the kind that will protect its citizens—us!—from injustice. And true government, good government, would not force us to commit injustice, either. It’s because the current government has failed in both cases that citizens have the moral duty to resist it. In short, it’s not a call to govern ourselves “not at all,” but a call to govern ourselves better . Walden sold relatively well. Famously his first book, A Week , didn’t sell at all, but then, it was published by a firm that didn’t do any marketing. Even so, it was widely reviewed and earned him respect as a promising up-and-coming young writer. Walden was reviewed very warmly, including in England, and by his death in 1862, Thoreau had a solid reputation. Not extreme fame, but people who knew him said, ‘you wait, he’s the real thing. It may take time, but later generations will look back and say he was one of the greats.’ Indeed, Thoreau became more famous after his death, to the point where a complete edition of his work was published in 1906—and by complete, I mean even the 14 volumes of his journal. Think about how well known and beloved a writer must be for a commercial publisher to invest in a 20-volume edition of their works. That speaks to a pretty solid rise in fame in a period of less than 50 years."