Walden & Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

Back in the woods, Thoreau describes all the ponds around his house and meets John Field, a man who is too entrenched in his way of life to try a change as Thoreau has. When he wanted some company or some gossip, he often went to the village, where he was once arrested for not paying a tax but was released the next day.

Thoreau's daily work in the bean-field, he says, dignified his existence and connected him to the earth through the ancient art of husbandry. At Walden he receives many visitors, however, as many as 30 at a time, including a Canadian woodchopper, an unsophisticated man who nevertheless impresses Thoreau. He believes, more than just reading, that a man must be a seer and listener, constantly alert to nature, and he revels in his solitude, seeing nature as a companion that wards off melancholy. Discussing his intellectual life, he venerates the written word, calling books the true wealth of nations and urging all people to learn to read well. He went to the woods to 'live deliberately,' he says, citing simplicity as the path to spiritual wakefulness and taking nature as his model. When he chooses where to live and moves into his house, he celebrates becoming a part of nature and holds the pond sacred. Thoreau builds his own small cabin, earns some money by working in his bean-field, and keeps meticulous financial records to demonstrate how little a man needs to live. Criticizing society's spiritually empty obsessions with clothing and elaborate homes, as well as with formal education, travel, and the use of animal labor, he praises the savage man, who is free from the distraction of society's institutions and lives a simple life. Thoreau designs a life of 'voluntary poverty' for himself, determining the absolute necessities of man's existence to be: food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. In the book he sets out his beliefs about society and the nature of human existence, saying first that he believes men need not work as hard as they do, if they are willing to simplify their lives and follow their own instincts.

Seeking solitude and self-reliance, Thoreau says, he moved to the woods by Walden Pond, outside Concord Massachusetts, where he lived for two years, writing this book, before returning to society.

Walden & Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau