[The 49th
annual Earth Day is April 22nd, so this week I’ll AmericanStudy
a handful of environmental stories and histories. Share yours in comments to
help us celebrate this wonderful and all too often underappreciated home of
ours!]
On three
distinct but interconnected ways to commemorate one of our most foundational
and enduring environmental voices.
1)
Read Faith
in a Seed: I’ve made
the case many times in this space for broadening
our Thoreau canon beyond the most established texts, and one of the most
important ways to do so would entail reading Faith in a Seed: The Dispersion of Seeds and Other Late Natural History
Writings. Collected by the wonderful
Thoreau scholar Bradley Dean from various works left unfinished at
Thoreau’s death (including The Dispersion of Seeds), Faith in a Seed offers a vision of
Thoreau the naturalist and scientist that goes well beyond any of the other
works I’ve previously highlighted in this space (or, indeed, any of the works
published in his lifetime). Yet Faith
also reflects how much Thoreau’s perspective, ideas, and writing had evolved in
the course of his two decades as a published writer—an evolution that
highlights the tragedy of his far too youthful passing but also offers a vital
challenge to any attempt to define Thoreau only through Walden or any one text or project. For all those reasons, I can’t
imagine a more apt Earth Day week read than Faith
in a Seed.
2)
Visit Walden Pond: Thanks to the efforts of Don Henley
(yes, that Don Henley)
and many others in the Walden Woods Project,
the woods and pond have been largely preserved as they were in Thoreau’s era.
As I wrote
in this post about six years ago, however, even the changes, which have
made the pond more
accessible to modern visitors, seem to me to be in the spirit of Thoreau’s
project and book. The site now features a newly
renovated and still evolving Visitor Center, one which in its numerous
green elements and initiatives as well as in its exhibits both presents and
honors Thoreau’s legacy and vision. Moreover, I can testify from personal
experience that simply sitting on the beach at Walden—or, as highlighted in
this blog post by a favorite nature writer of mine, walking through
the woods as a train passes by—allows you to feel a genuine and moving
kinship with both Thoreau and the many millions of others who have spent
meaningful time in these spaces. You won’t spend a summer or fall or winter day
more happily, and certainly won’t better commemorate Earth Day, than by
visiting Walden Pond.
3)
Walk with Others: Maybe you lived thousands of
miles away from Walden, though. And maybe you’re not able to get your hands on
a copy of Faith in a Seed. Well, I’m
here to tell you that you can commemorate Earth Day in a deeply appropriate
Thoreau-inspired way wherever you are, and with nothing other than your own two
feet and (ideally) a companion or two. I don’t know of any American author or
figure who more consistently or convincingly made the case for walking than
Thoreau, a fact illustrated by the wonderful children’s book
character who bears his name. It might seem that solitude was an important
part of those walks, and certainly Thoreau wasn’t averse to such solo treks.
But as “A Walk to
Wachusett” reflects, Thoreau was always more than happy to share his walks,
and indeed wrote about such companionship as a vital part of the experience.
Having walked around Walden Pond (and many many other places, some familiar to
one or all of us, some new to all) with my parents, with my sons, and with
other good friends, I can say that here I entirely agree with the sometimes
iconoclastic but always interesting and important environmental writer.
Next Earth Day
post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Earth Day stories or histories you’d highlight?
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