Book Review: Walden Pond: A History
While at the New Orleans Writers’ Residency, I am writing the first draft of a novel that has many connections to Thoreau’s Walden. Over the last four weeks, I have been busily reading Walden (again), various Thoreau essays, a bio entitled The Thoreau You Don’t Know, by Robert Sullivan, and W. Barksdale Maynard’s Walden Pond: A History.
Maynard’s history of the pond starts with the Transcendentalists, particularly Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott, as they troop daily around the woods and pond. Plenty of excerpts from their journals and letters convey that they experienced something special about this location, as it came to represent the physical manifestation of their philosophy.
Maynard does a good job in explaining how the precepts of Transcendentalism played out in the Concord community. Transcendentalism was a call to awaken the individual in an increasingly industrialized society that dehumanized its workers. As Emerson promoted a return to nature as a means of re-grounding yourself, others endeavored to put it into practice. One such effort was Brook Farm, an experiment in communal living, where the residents would blend manual labor with intellectual pursuits. The community ended up failing, but Maynard suggests that the concept may have been one influence on Thoreau’s decision to build his solitary cabin alongside Walden Pond. Thoreau was showing by example how the individual could live deliberately as a means to build a better society.
After Thoreau’s death, his family and friends wished to commemorate his life, and that is the moment that Walden Pond as an institution came into existence. Maynard traces the curious history of the park. What started as a personal memorial to Thoreau became the destination of many pilgrims. Readers of Walden wanted to experience what Thoreau described so beautifully, so they came to the pond to get in touch with his memory. Reality, however, proved something else entirely.
W. Barksdale MaynardCirca 1880, Walden Pond became Lake Walden, which included a bathing house, an amusement park, and a football field. The Red Cross had its own beach to teach swimming to urban children in need of a nature getaway. The constant flood of visitors brought threats of erosion, along with some criminal activity and violence.
What fascinated me about the history was the extent of fighting among groups wishing to preserve the park. Each group claimed to speak for Thoreau: “Henry would have wanted this” or “Thoreau never would have approved of that.” Over time, the increasing amount of tourism was turning Thoreau’s contemplative spot into a capitalist mecca.
Maynard’s history raises interesting questions about how we preserve our special places. Near the parking lot stands a replica of Thoreau’s cabin, while on the northwestern side of the pond is a cairn of stones on the actual site of his cabin. So, which is the true experience: getting to see what the cabin would have looked like or visiting the exact spot on the cabin?
Thoroughly ThoreauAs environmental preservation becomes critical in the face of climate change, we are faced with how to protect what is natural. Walden Pond has changed significantly since Thoreau’s time -- the number of forest fires that occurred is staggering -- but the greatest change may be in how we honor his memory there. The park has become a tangible destination for what was a spiritual undertaking. We have invested it with personalized meaning even as we endeavor to identify precisely what Thoreau was writing about.
After all the descriptions of fighting among the preservationist groups, I found myself wondering what Thoreau would think of Walden Pond now. Probably he would have fought hard to preserve the natural beauty. But I also found myself thinking of the following quote from Walden:
“I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.”
In other words, we continue to grow. Walden Pond is part of us now.
Maynard’s history of the pond starts with the Transcendentalists, particularly Emerson, Thoreau, and Alcott, as they troop daily around the woods and pond. Plenty of excerpts from their journals and letters convey that they experienced something special about this location, as it came to represent the physical manifestation of their philosophy. Maynard does a good job in explaining how the precepts of Transcendentalism played out in the Concord community. Transcendentalism was a call to awaken the individual in an increasingly industrialized society that dehumanized its workers. As Emerson promoted a return to nature as a means of re-grounding yourself, others endeavored to put it into practice. One such effort was Brook Farm, an experiment in communal living, where the residents would blend manual labor with intellectual pursuits. The community ended up failing, but Maynard suggests that the concept may have been one influence on Thoreau’s decision to build his solitary cabin alongside Walden Pond. Thoreau was showing by example how the individual could live deliberately as a means to build a better society.
After Thoreau’s death, his family and friends wished to commemorate his life, and that is the moment that Walden Pond as an institution came into existence. Maynard traces the curious history of the park. What started as a personal memorial to Thoreau became the destination of many pilgrims. Readers of Walden wanted to experience what Thoreau described so beautifully, so they came to the pond to get in touch with his memory. Reality, however, proved something else entirely.
W. Barksdale MaynardCirca 1880, Walden Pond became Lake Walden, which included a bathing house, an amusement park, and a football field. The Red Cross had its own beach to teach swimming to urban children in need of a nature getaway. The constant flood of visitors brought threats of erosion, along with some criminal activity and violence.What fascinated me about the history was the extent of fighting among groups wishing to preserve the park. Each group claimed to speak for Thoreau: “Henry would have wanted this” or “Thoreau never would have approved of that.” Over time, the increasing amount of tourism was turning Thoreau’s contemplative spot into a capitalist mecca.
Maynard’s history raises interesting questions about how we preserve our special places. Near the parking lot stands a replica of Thoreau’s cabin, while on the northwestern side of the pond is a cairn of stones on the actual site of his cabin. So, which is the true experience: getting to see what the cabin would have looked like or visiting the exact spot on the cabin?
Thoroughly ThoreauAs environmental preservation becomes critical in the face of climate change, we are faced with how to protect what is natural. Walden Pond has changed significantly since Thoreau’s time -- the number of forest fires that occurred is staggering -- but the greatest change may be in how we honor his memory there. The park has become a tangible destination for what was a spiritual undertaking. We have invested it with personalized meaning even as we endeavor to identify precisely what Thoreau was writing about.After all the descriptions of fighting among the preservationist groups, I found myself wondering what Thoreau would think of Walden Pond now. Probably he would have fought hard to preserve the natural beauty. But I also found myself thinking of the following quote from Walden:
“I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.”
In other words, we continue to grow. Walden Pond is part of us now.
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