From Walden, of course.
“It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived [in the woods] a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.”
No, you did not “go below,” Henry. You forged a path of individualist ethos that shapes the American character to this day. Some may have misread your secular homilies as release from responsibility to community, from the commons, but this is a reductive misreading and misunderstanding of your words, context, and intent. You lived and worked within an active community, visited daily – sometimes several times daily – by relatives and townspeople, a fabric of community that allowed and engendered your freedom of spirit.
This, then is Thoreau’s message: it is only within and from community human spirit rises; the loam of human connection nourishes and supports the growth of the radiant sunflower. Thank you for your spirit, Henry David Thoreau. And thank you to the love inherent to human connection that allowed it.
Steven Blaisdell MA, BCC 