A Walden of Your Own

Taking advantage of a beautiful fall day this past weekend, I pumped up the tires of my bike, oiled the chain, and set off on a journey to Walden Pond. Seventeen miles of bone-jarring bumps and cuss-inducing close passes by reckless drivers later, I found myself pedaling into the spiritual home of Transcendentalism and one of its most famous theorists, Henry David Thoreau.

To begin with, the absence of bike racks proved irksome, especially considering that that I was visiting the hut of one of the great proponents of self-sufficiency. The original structure was demolished and partially rebuilt as a pigsty, though you can poke your head inside a replica built roughly 10 steps from the parking lot. A park ranger, who called Thoreau “Henry” as if reminiscing about an oddball great uncle, suggested that I meander half a mile along the shore of the pond to the original site of his shack.

Hoping for solitude, I made my way to the site, only to happen upon a boisterous family engaged in a shouting match. The children began throwing rocks at one another, eliciting a growl and a “you’ll pay for this tomorrow” from the mother.

Thwarted, I left the home site and set off on a path through the woods. It was hemmed in by a rusting barbed wire fence to prevent visitors from straying from the trail, erected in apparent contrast to the spirit of Thoreau’s existence at Walden. When I finally came upon a gap in the fence, I began crunching through the woods in spite of the warning signs, the words of Robert Frost echoing in my head.

I finally settled on a sun-dappled knoll overlooking the pond and, leaning against a tree, took out a notebook. Trying to conceal myself from any passing park rangers, I reflected upon “Civil Disobedience” and Thoreau’s arrest for refusing to pay taxes as the wail of a police siren from a not-so-distant four-lane highway wafted through the trees.

Walden Pond, I’m saddened to say, has for the most part been spoiled, victimized by tour buses and triathlon types swimming laps in wetsuits. It has become a means to an end, ignored for its true beauty as a spot to be merely appreciated instead of used as a public park (or as a amusement park, as was the case in the late 19th century).

Thoreau famously retreated to Walden in search of space and time to pursue his passions. He was essentially a squatter on land owned by fellow Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, and he aimed to do as little labor as possible while there so as to maximize his intellectual productivity. Though two years of his life were consumed by his experiment, the project was never all-consuming. Many label Thoreau a dilettante for welcoming guests to his hut and strolling back to town for dinner on a regular basis, but I think it makes more sense to interpret his actions as a sign that he was never a slave to one particular ideology or way of life.

In my experience, Thoreau possesses a unique ability to enchant high school and college students who read his work for the first time. How many of us wouldn’t love to retreat to a secluded microcosm of our own design, shrugging off the fetters of life in society in order to unearth our genuine intellectual selves? For some, a gap year fits the bill. For others, a year or two between college and graduate school might suffice. But this desire to escape the constraints of life at Harvard is really misguided.

I think that our college has become another Walden Pond—a fallen idyll that, having captivated the imagination, lets us down at the end of the long journey here. There’s no need for Harvard to be that way. You can use this place for the academic equivalent of endurance sports or as nothing more than a mindless holiday from the pressing responsibilities that await, but you can also do as Thoreau did and use this time for something loftier.

We’ve been handed our beds and our meals for four years. We have the key to one of the world’s great libraries, and all the pens and paper we could want. Unlike Thoreau, we don’t even have to chop our own wood. Who says that four years at Harvard can’t be every bit as intellectually formative as two years at Walden?

I never really experienced Walden Pond in the way that I’d hoped, and I’m probably still mired in what Emerson called “the sluggard intellect of this continent.” Harvard remains a means to an end instead of an end in itself, to loosely paraphrase Kant. Yet it doesn’t have to be that way: Thoreau produced several books while at Walden and still had time to hike for four miles each day and grow his own food. There’s nothing to stop you from reclaiming Harvard as a Walden of your own.

Ian R. Van Wye ’17 is a Crimson editorial writer in Mather House.