![]() ![]() It’s a symbol of living a meaningful life. Near the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house, and began to cut down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber (p 37). Thoreau named his book after his retreat in the woods. He brought with him only the necessities of life and wrote about this adventure in his book Walden. Turned off by the incessant busyness of this time, Thoreau withdrew from city life to live alone in the woods. He lived during the height of the Industrial Age, distinguished by the rise of gigantic factories, expanding urban developments, and powerful machines such as steam engines. ![]() As a writer who professed the value of simplicity almost two centuries ago (he lived from 1817 to 1862), he was a contrarian for his time. Simple living seems to be a thing of the past. Many consumers are buying the latest digital devices, from tablets and fitness trackers to commercial drones. Social media bombard us with endless notifications. Nowadays, smartphones inundate us with text messages. Most have probably heard of Thoreau, even though his message of simplicity sounds passé. One author I find myself constantly revisiting is Henry David Thoreau. Every so often, I like to pick up books I haven’t glanced at in a while and lose myself in the words of a sagacious writer. ![]()
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