Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Reaching Back for an Old Friend



"I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Chapter 2

It's been over thirty years since I read these words in a third floor cubby hole among the stacks in the old Goodell Library at UMASS Amherst.

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His pure action of contemplation in a small cabin in the woods outside of daily human interaction continues to be a source of inspiration to many. I was surprised that Ryan and Courtney visited Walden Pond in Concord two weeks ago. Interesting the effect that a human can have - just trying to understand life - on people over two hundred years later.
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Thoreau would have had a killer blog.

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