Have you noticed how we are moving through the seasons? We now enter autumn, the time of harvests, trees turning to colors, and finding warmth. “I now began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter.” We know Thoreau loved...
After being rather lectured on chastity and carnivores in the last chapter, it’s time for some humor. We begin with a satirical and self-effacing mock dialogue between the Hermit and the Poet. These voices are commonly understood as Thoreau and Ellery Channing, or...
The term Higher Law became popular in the mid-nineteenth century as an argument against the institution of slavery. In Slavery in Massachusetts, Thoreau writes, “What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity, —who recognize a higher law than the Constitution,...
Thoreau begins with a vivid array of plant descriptions, moves to standing under a rainbow, then to an afternoon fishing—all offered with a sense of sublime mythos. Suddenly a rainstorm requires refuge in an immigrant family’s hut. Another rainbow appears and a...
Say to yourself, Coenobite: Cee-no-bite. Now you’re ready to read. This chapter is a tribute to the ponds where Thoreau paddled, fished, swam, played his flute, explored, measured, and walked. They contained a curriculum he attentively studied. We are the recipients...
