Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts

Why spend two years in a tiny cabin in the woods?

In Where I lived, and What I Lived For, Thoreau states that he “wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach […].” I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” (aphorism in orange)

Thoreau gives examples of what he does not want: “Our life is frittered away by detail.” “Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states with its boundary forever fluctuating.” Multi-tasking, a focus on the superficial details of life, on acquiring things and making everything more and more complicated, removes us from living a deep and meaningful life. “We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.” In our efforts to expand across American, to increase productivity, industry and technological advancement, we become slaves to a complicated life in which we continuously want more.

Through a life of “simplicity, simplicity, simplicity” Thoreau wanted to “live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life […] to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

If life turned out to be mean he wanted to “publish its meanness to the world.” If life were sublime, he would “know it by experience” and “be able to give a true account of it.” This was clearly an experiment which results he planned to share with the world.

What about relationships? Is Thoreau missing out on an important aspect of life by not doing this experiment with someone else? Would that just be the next step? Is the essence of life so pure it does not include relationships? What will he do with this new information? Other than publish, how will this experiment inform his life? What would Thoreau say about technology today?

A collection of nature essays Not scientific study of nature but rather a study of an individual’s relationship with nature First person narrative Details of daily life Two years compressed into one Autobiography? Fiction? Non-fiction? Style of writing shaped to reflect the nature being observed

Evitable: I think this means avoidable since inevitable means it will happen no matter what. Dictionary: adj. Possible to avoid; avoidable Supernumerary: From the sentence I thought it meant broken, awry, extra Dictionary: adj. exceeding what is necessary, required, or desired