Walden Essays Part Two

After some experience with Thoreau this semester, I’ve found that some of his lines stick out so clearly to me and continue to stick with me even after I finish the essays. There are three I want to focus on: two from “The Pond in Winter” and one from “Spring”.

From hiking in Muir Woods with my family

The first one is so simple, but I think it could be a focal point for this class as a whole: “Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask.” Ever since nature came to be, it has just existed. It gradually became home and began to sustain life for animals, and things were doing just fine until humans decided to modify every bit of it. Nature has never taken from us or used us in any way, so why do we feel the need to manipulate it? Nature has never asked anything of us either, so who’s to say our duty is to take care of it (or even take from it)?

The second line from “The Pond in Winter” that caught my attention was “Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful.” Nature is its own entity; it has its own existence. Nature can get along fine without us, and it keeps growing and changing even when we’re not looking. Our laws don’t dictate nature no matter how much we want to control and “own” it.  

Onto “Spring”, it was full of imagery and detail which I loved. The line that later grew into a giant mental picture started off with “Few phenomena gave me more delight than to observe the forms which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing down the sides of a deep cut on the railroad…” I think we take things like this for granted, and I find it especially evident this winter due to the absence of it. As much as I dislike snow and the colder months, there is such beauty in the thawing and metamorphosis from winter to spring, but this past winter has been so dull and bleak; it seems more like a really cold fall with spring teasing us every few weeks. “Spring” seemed to bring things full circle and I thought it was a good way to wrap up Walden.