Walking with Me & Talking with Thoreau

I began my walk at my house, in the field out back. The land stretches for several acres and its mostly open land except for a single apple tree that happens to stand in the middle of the farther back field on top of the final hill. I walk in a weird pattern across the field and I realize as many times as I have seen this land, walked right “by” it, and gone in and out of the house, it seemed quite ordinary to me. I suddenly field dumb for walking across this open field, looking like I am completely “lost”. But I realize that this is exactly the point. I WAS completely “lost” because I couldn’t allow myself to actually take part with the land. I continue walking toward the tree and as stupid as it sounds I can sort of relate to this tree. Standing alone above the fields, the tree and I look out and I feel that there is a sense of “vastness” that I have never seen before. I think, “this field is pretty”, and I notice the cows from the farm up the road (since this is on a road partly in the “country” but with surrounding houses and their own fields and farms). I take a seat and think, “what the hell am I doing in the middle of a field?” I don’t like nature, I have never been camping, I don’t like bugs, and I hate being dirty. Ok so I am not an “outdoorsy” person, but then I start to think that it doesn’t really matter, this is why people like nature, because it has something that other places, things, and people don’t, it is different because of this right here, my feeling. I think after trying to figure out what to write that, that “wow!” I sound cliché. But I think that makes the point, we all want to “feel” something for nature, to connect, and just maybe I am starting to do that. Maybe one day I will go camping after all!

Thoreau’s “Economy” discusses the ideas that made him decide to live at Walden Pond for a little over two years. In this first chapter we see many themes but the most prevalent of these are the things that man does to aid in and ultimately hinder his survival. The core pieces to man’s survival are food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. But the problem with these, as Thoreau suggests is the way in which man has transformed them. I find myself thinking that instead of these things now, in our “civilized” world, as being crucial they are merely more “things”, becoming luxuries, made bigger and better by the moment. One is never enough, therefore man has taken the simple and “savage” way of living and transformed it using these four tools not just for living but for creating another problem in the journey from “savage” to “civilized”.

Man works so hard for these things, for more materials to fill the houses they build and yet the possessions which he works so hard for actually hinder him by “degrading” their life. Thoreau suggests, “Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes be content with less?” (pg. 32) How can man build these homes upon the idea of “things” and not man himself? We then find Thoreau to say “Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think they must have such a one as their neighbors have.” (pg. 32) Wanting more, envying what others have leads us in a circle of working more, getting more, wanting more, then having to work more and so on and so on, in a pointless circle. Unfortunately with all of the things man has done to “civilize” himself it is not enough because “While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them.” (31) Thoreau’s ideas of living the way he did on Walden Pond make me realize that man has created this problem of irony that through progression comes regression. How do we solve this and how can we move forward without hindering out future?