The Thoreauvian Substrate

"With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike. In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe: no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed. That time which we really improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future." Henry David Thoreau, "Reading," Walden.

I first read these words at Swain's Pond, New Hampshire, sitting among the blueberry bushes of Hornpout Island, probably in the summer of 1973. I remember how I thrilled to them then; four decades later, I still thrill to them. Walden was my first extra-Biblical scripture; Thoreau's admonition to become "essentially" a student and observer my first extra-Biblical commandment. Walt Whitman boasted to contain multitudes, Thoreau's "ecstatic witness" contains even Whitman. He disciples me even as he discipled Tolstoy. Though he founded no school, I am of it. Wherever he would saunter, I would follow.