Life in the Woods - Henry's Project
| School/Organization: |
Thoreau Institute
Lincoln, Massachusetts
USA |
| Grade Level: |
Other Independent Project |
| Group Size: |
1 |
| Project Scope: |
Advanced |
| Hours Spent on Project: |
19032 |
| Category: |
Biodiversity, Conservation, Education and Public Awareness, Forests, Green Buildings, Preservation, Research, Water and Wetlands, Other
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I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
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| The Woods |
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| My House |
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| My Book |
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How Your Group's Environmental Ethic Changed
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.
We are wont to imagine rare and delectable places in some remote and more celestial corner of the system, behind the constellation of Cassiopeia’s Chair, far from noise and disturbance. I discovered that my house actually had its site in such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of the universe. Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! Let us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails.
What We Wish We Had Known Before We Started.
In constructing my house, I paid too much for the two casks of lime and I bought more horsehair than I needed. Some of my experiments in living failed, including food purchases such as flour, sugar, lard, applies, dried apple, sweet potatoes, one pumpkin, one watermelon, and salt. Flour costs more than Indian meal, both money and trouble. The second year I did better than the first, for I spaded up all the land which I required, only about a third of an acre instead of the two and a half acres I had planted the previous year.
How We Made A Difference
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary: new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws will be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal since, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplified his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Next Steps
At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again. 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. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there 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.