The Way of ‘Walden’: Finding Peace in Simplicity

Beautiful fall foliage at Walden Pond, Concord Massachusetts USA. Walden Pond is a lake in Concord, formed by retreating glaciers 10,000–12,000 years ago.

Where can we find solace in today’s fast-paced world? Can modernity offer meaning to our fretting souls?

Although he didn’t live in the 21st century, Henry David Thoreau asked himself similar questions when he left for Concord, Massachusetts. There in the still Northeastern woods, he lived for two years, two months, and two days. His reflections produced “Walden; or, Life in the Woods,” a heartfelt testimony teeming with precious lessons about the role of beauty and self-reliance in a meaningful life.

A page of the handwritten draft of "Walden," 1854, by Henry David Thoreau. Ink on paper. Huntington Library and Botanical Garden, San Marino, California. It reminds us to slow down and contemplate, the same way Thoreau did when he spent time at Walden Pond. Epolk/CC BY-SA 4.0

Concord and the Walden Pond

Thoreau moved to Concord because he wanted to explore life’s most essential elements: “a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no house and no housekeeper.” His philosophical interests motivated his search for seclusion. As a proponent of Transcendentalism, Thoreau emphasized the importance of the natural world as both a source of beauty and a medium to understand the cosmos. Social and political institutions smothered the beautiful beneath layers of superfluous needs. Pristine nature was thus the only space to reclaim beauty and nourish the spirit.

Concord was the perfect place to apply Transcendentalism. Thoreau’s humble village was surrounded by majestic mountain ranges, “those true-blue coins from heaven’s own mint.” The changing seasons afforded “new views,” and “undisturbed solitude and stillness” enabled him to turn inwardly. As Thoreau’s mentor and colleague Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “In the woods, we return to reason and faith.”

On Self-Reliance                             

In “Self-Reliance,” Emerson spoke of the need to extricate ourselves from the shackling influences of conformity: “Insist on yourself; never imitate.” Pursue life independently—live unencumbered and free of distractions.

This emphasis on self-reliance was most evident in the Transcendentalists’ appreciation for manual labor. Following Emerson, Thoreau proudly reported that he “did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans.” Tilling land unified work and life. Hands-on care for his winter supplies gave Thoreau a direct glimpse into the creation of food, which turned from a mindless need to a conscious, meaningful activity. Labor has “a constant and imperishable moral”: It demands direct agency and affirms our human dignity.

Portrait photograph from a daguerreotype of Henry David Thoreau. Public Domain

Warnings against “civilization” make us question whether Emerson and Thoreau endorsed an extreme form of individualism. However, the Transcendentalists understood that no one could do everything alone. Humans are part and parcel of nature. They could never exist as disjointed atoms. The Transcendentalist philosophy of the self wasn’t promoting selfishness, but an earnest call to cultivate ourselves through meaningful work work without losing sight of our place in the divine cosmos.

On Simplicity and Progress 

We may think that material abundance is directly correlated to prosperity. The more we make and have, the happier and more fulfilled we’ll be. Yet Thoreau would ask: Is material progress necessarily beneficial?

Thoreau offers a cyclical conception of history: “The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands. […] It was not always dry land where we dwell.” What is needed now may become obsolete tomorrow. Progress isn’t a linear trajectory where more is always better. It’s a dynamic metric that should predilect essential needs over nonessential wants.

Thoreau wasn’t suggesting that we shouldn’t strive for conventional progress. He was reminding us that an obsession with quantity and abundance precludes the happiness we assume they could provide. “I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely,” he tells us in his first chapter titled “Economy.”

Nature reminds us that our essential needs are few. If we shift our attention from wants to what is truly needed, we’ll be better able to reap simplicity’s fruits. Only a life in nature would allow that.

On Reading as Living

Thoreau believed that life was  incomplete without literature. He kept Homer’s “Iliad” on his table through the summer, though he opened it only occasionally. Despite toiling to finish his house and grow his bean garden, Thoreau sustained himself “by the prospect of such reading in future.” He even confessed, ashamedly, to “reading one or two shallow books of travel in the intervals of my work.” Only a book like the “Iliad” could kindle his spirit. All else was distraction.

For Thoreau, reading was more than an intellectual exercise. How we read mirrors how we live. Reading for the sake of leisure or distraction might be better than not reading at all, but it could never sustain the profound relationship to art our spirit craves. For that, we need sustained attention to great literature, which nature’s quiet can encourage.

This is a 6th-century Greek manuscript of Homer’s "Iliad." Public Domain

On Science and Beauty

“Walden” is rightly characterized as great literature. Its style ranges from passionate descriptions of landscapes to nuanced philosophical reflections on nature and humanity. Thoreau uses metaphors, personification, and other sophisticated literary devices to weave disparate topics into a cohesive whole.

In addition to its literary powers, “Walden” is an excellent model for scientific inquiry. In the mid-1800s, “science” was in its infancy. Scientific discoveries were often the brainchildren of educated amateurs with the time and resources to explore the natural world.  Although Thoreau didn’t write for scientific purposes, his attention to detail and precise language set a high standard for dabbling natural scientists. For example, he described the “bottomless” Walden Pond as “a clear and deep green well, half a mile long and a mile and three quarters in circumference” that “contains about sixty-one and a half acres; a perennial spring in the midst of pine and oak woods, without any visible inlet or outlet except by the clouds and evaporation.” This account continues for three long paragraphs, where Thoreau mentions everything from “ascetic fish” and “Adam and Eve” to water features that “fit studies for a Michael Angelo [sic].”

The Transcendentalism movement inspired poets to write about nature, beauty, and its relationship to urban life. Public Domain

These meticulous observations indicate Thoreau’s appreciation for nature’s elegant design. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Thoreau’s inquiries into the natural world weren’t  guided by a thirst for quantitative knowledge. He didn’t care much about discovering a butterfly species or devising ways to clone plants. If he did, it was the by-product of a deeper, higher motive: beauty. His prose was meant to exalt the splendor he witnessed daily. Thoreau knew that nature radiated divinity, a necessary quality for spiritual fulfillment.

Thoreau’s Invitation

Thoreau didn’t want us to emulate everything he did. His lifestyle was unusual then, and it would be even more unusual today. Rather, he invited us to pursue a life of contemplation, devotion to spiritual wellbeing, and careful contact with nature: “Let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our own brows, and take up a little life into our pores.”

Why should we strive to commune with nature? Why bother seeking peace and living mindfully as if every moment were our last? Because “Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.”

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