The Way of ‘Walden’: Finding Peace in Simplicity

Where can we find solace in today’s fast-paced world? Can modernity offer meaning to our fretting souls?
This emphasis on self-reliance was most evident in the Transcendentalists’ appreciation for manual labor. Following Emerson, Thoreau proudly reported that he “did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans.” Tilling land unified work and life. Hands-on care for his winter supplies gave Thoreau a direct glimpse into the creation of food, which turned from a mindless need to a conscious, meaningful activity. Labor has “a constant and imperishable moral”: It demands direct agency and affirms our human dignity.
Thoreau offers a cyclical conception of history: “The life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands. […] It was not always dry land where we dwell.” What is needed now may become obsolete tomorrow. Progress isn’t a linear trajectory where more is always better. It’s a dynamic metric that should predilect essential needs over nonessential wants.
Thoreau wasn’t suggesting that we shouldn’t strive for conventional progress. He was reminding us that an obsession with quantity and abundance precludes the happiness we assume they could provide. “I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely,” he tells us in his first chapter titled “Economy.”
For Thoreau, reading was more than an intellectual exercise. How we read mirrors how we live. Reading for the sake of leisure or distraction might be better than not reading at all, but it could never sustain the profound relationship to art our spirit craves. For that, we need sustained attention to great literature, which nature’s quiet can encourage.
In addition to its literary powers, “Walden” is an excellent model for scientific inquiry. In the mid-1800s, “science” was in its infancy. Scientific discoveries were often the brainchildren of educated amateurs with the time and resources to explore the natural world.  Although Thoreau didn’t write for scientific purposes, his attention to detail and precise language set a high standard for dabbling natural scientists. For example, he described the “bottomless” Walden Pond as “a clear and deep green well, half a mile long and a mile and three quarters in circumference” that “contains about sixty-one and a half acres; a perennial spring in the midst of pine and oak woods, without any visible inlet or outlet except by the clouds and evaporation.” This account continues for three long paragraphs, where Thoreau mentions everything from “ascetic fish” and “Adam and Eve” to water features that “fit studies for a Michael Angelo [sic].”
Why should we strive to commune with nature? Why bother seeking peace and living mindfully as if every moment were our last? Because “Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.”