awake & reading: waldenThe chapter begins inncocently enough with HDT saying something to the effect of, "So, when I was done working with my beans and I had done some reading or writing and had gone for a swim (bath), I might go over to the village to hear a little news (gossip)." He says he would walk in the woods in order to see the birds and hear the wind in the pine, and he would walk in the village to see the men and hear the rattle of the carts. This made me grin and think, "hm."
Once in the village he observes that the people there have "such a vast appetite" for news and have "such sound digestive organs, that they can sit forever in public avenues without stirring." It seems that the 24-hour news cycle isn't such a contemporary idea after all. "Hm."
When walking home from the village he says he was dreaming and absent-minded all the way, unable to "recall a single step of my walk." I've had commutes like that. "Hm."
Then he mentions a couple of young men he met once who didn't find their way around the woods so easily, especially at night. "It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time...In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons...and not till we are completely lost, or turned round - for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost - do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature...Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations."
That tripped me up and continues to. Maybe it shook me awake a little bit and made me realize that I honestly don't know if I'm lost in the woods or not. Am I walking along on a path that I know so well that I can feel my way with my feet, even in the pitch dark of night? Are these steps that I'm taking sure to deliver me to my doorstep and a warm fire as long as I keep taking them? Or, am I wandering in circles, only 50 yards from home, but wandering just the same? Or. Have I lost my way entirely, and this road I've found is a diversion, a trap set by a cloaked thief?
There is warmth enough for me to know that the latter is thankfully not the case, although, I'm certain he's in these woods somewhere. As to whether or not I'm circling the home I long for, or if I'm steadily heading straight toward it, I honestly cannot tell.
3 comments:
Isn't it funny how Thoreau recommends that we do certain "wild" things and we think to ourselves, now how can I do what he is saying in modern terms. Or, I might think, he doesn't really mean "get lost in the woods." He just means...well I'm not sure what he means. Or, maybe he really means what he is saying.
Brian, I love your post. I love the quote. And I love the idea of being lost in the woods. When I read that quote I am reminded of the time that my friend and I went wandering in the woods around Walden Pond. It was a delightful July day. The sun shone on the leafy floor in spots and splotches, the air was calm and balmy. In all my memories of that day I remember a pleasant woody feeling in the air. My friend and I read Thoreau and Wordsworth as we walked along the trail from the pond to Emerson's Cliffs. In fact the experience was more Wordsworthian than Thoreauvian in nature. It was too pleasant, too nice (I'm not complaining).
But there was a time I was lost in the woods. Only, it wasn't the woods, it was the bleak stony mountains of the English Lake District. I had been hiking alone all day with a yellow and black backpack full of supplies. By 6:00 pm I had hiked many miles and seen mostly rocks and fog with a few lost sheep in between. It was rainy and chilly, but not cold. When I reached Skafell Pike the fog was thicker than ever and the rocks sharper and my pack heavier. Somewhere in that wilderness I took a wrong turn. My eyes weren't closed but they might as well have been with the fog as thick as it was.
Being lost in the wilderness of England after hiking many miles over rock, up and down mountains is not a pleasant feeling. and maybe that is Thoreau's point.
While standing on top of Skafell Pike with night almost upon me and all of England veiled in fog, I appreciated and was terrified by the "vastness and strangeness of nature." That terror was not assuaged even a little when later that night the wind and rain reduced my little tent to a tangled mess of string, stakes, and nylon.
But needless to say I survived that night. But the moment I remember most might strike you as strange. In the darkest hours of the night in my tent when it made no difference whether my eyes were open or closed, I knew the terrible truth. I was alone.
I had "lost the world" that night up on Skafell Pike. And in that darkness with only the rock in my back and my thoughts to keep me company i realized the "infinite extent of [my] relations." There was an infinite relation to darkness and loneliness that I became aware of. I lost all sense of time; the hours, minutes and seconds became nebulous until they were rolled up into a tangled ball of yarn. There was possibly an unconscious kinship to all the other lost wanderers throughout past, present, and future that was born in me. Maybe to understand you should say the word lost, or alone over and over until it loses its meaning.
Maybe Thoreau does not recommend that we get ourselves lost in the wilderness, but if we do, we should consider ourselves lucky.
So to know ones self is to know that you are alone? Someone wrote that every man comes into the world alone and leaves it alone. But that isn't what our self is. We are truely alone only when we are without which means that usually we are with. It's all in relation to something. I truely believe that no man is an island. No man can be truley human without another person to relate to. Even the saints who yearned for solitude with God were worned by their spiritual directors to be careful becuase complete solitude could lead to complete loss of self meaning dementia. So who I am is who I have known, spoken to, seen, experienced. We are all the people in our lives, past present and future. And the wonderful thing is that these people are the sign posts that point us toward heaven, even cause us to work our way their more profitably, my husband is always telling me he is my path to heaven. I believe that without him and many others I would be truley lost.
I just posted on an experience of a Sigur Ros concert, and then read this comment about our connectedness to people and experiences in our lives. That these things "point us to heaven" is quite, quite a thoughtful observation.
I agree, as I hope my post alludes to.
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