The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau By Elizabeth Witherell, with Elizabeth Dubrulle When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. (Walden, 3) With these words, Henry David Thoreau began the tale of his experiment of simple living at Walden Pond . Over the course of the next three hundred-odd pages, Thoreau outlined his philosophy of life, politics, and nature, laying the foundation for a secure place in the canon of great American writers. Although Walden enjoyed only moderate success in Thoreau's lifetime, his experiment at the pond would spark considerable interest in the years to come. The book has inspired other young people to follow his example and retire to a lonely spot--even if only in imagination--to ponder the world and their place in it.

Thoreau's words expressed the concerns of many of his contemporaries as industrialization and war permanently altered the world around them, just as they struck a chord in a generation of young people in the 1960s and 1970s who opposed the modern military-industrial complex and sought peace and simplicity in their lives. For many, Walden has served as a touchstone. In the years following Thoreau's death in 1862, his sister and his friends undertook the responsibility of editing his work. Posthumous editions of his previously unpublished or partially published works were produced by Ticknor & Fields and Houghton Mifflin, and articles about Thoreau and reviews of his writings appeared in newspapers and magazines. Thoreau's life and work have continued to provoke and inspire, and there are almost as many different opinions as there are readers. Which view of Thoreau is most accurate: The dour hermit of Walden Woods? The environmental guru? The antislavery crusader? The irresponsible layabout? The pacifist? The pantheist? The prophet? None suffices to represent Thoreau by itself; all find support in Walden.

THOREAU'S LIFE AT WALDEN POND In late March 1845 Thoreau went to Walden Pond, a sixty-two acre body of water a few miles from his parents' home in Concord, Massachusetts, and selected a spot to build a house. The site he picked was on land belonging to his close friend Ralph Waldo Emerson; he and Emerson had already discussed Thoreau's plan to live on the land which Emerson had recently purchased. By July 4 of that same year, the house was substantially complete and Thoreau moved to the pond. The experiment had begun. I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. (Walden, 90) He also went to the pond to work on a book that was to be a memorial tribute to his older brother John, who had died three years earlier of lockjaw. The narrative frame of the story is provided by a boat trip the brothers had taken in 1839, but there are many philosophical digressions.

This work, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers , was Thoreau's first published book. At Walden, Thoreau worked diligently on A Week, but he also explored Walden Woods and recorded his observations on nature in his Journal. He entertained visitors and made regular trips to town; friends and neighbors began to inquire about his life at the pond. What did he do all day? How did he make a living? Did he get lonely? What if he got sick? He began collecting material to write lectures for his curious townsmen, and he delivered two at the Concord Lyceum, on February 10 and 17, 1847. By the time he left the pond on September 6, 1847, he had combined his lectures on life at Walden with more notes from his journal to produce the first draft of a book which he hoped to publish shortly after A Week. A Week was published in 1849, with a note at the back announcing the imminent publication of Walden; or, Life in the Woods. A Week was not well received by the public, however, and only two hundred copies of it sold in the first few years after its publication.

Thoreau financed the volume himself. When publisher James Munroe returned the unsold copies to him in 1853, Thoreau wrote in a journal entry for October 28, 1853, "I have now a library of nearly 900 volumes over 700 of which I wrote myself--" Considering the failure of A Week, publishers were not enthusiastic about Walden, and plans for its publication were postponed. Over the next five years, through seven drafts, Walden evolved from a sometime shrill justification of Thoreau's unorthodox lifestyle into a complex, multi-layered account of a spiritual journey. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life... (Walden, 91) WALDEN'S RECEPTION AND THOREAU'S REPUTATION Walden was published on August 9, 1854. Two thousand copies were printed, selling for $1 each. Unlike Thoreau's first book, Walden enjoyed moderate success from the first, and it continued to sell reasonably well after Thoreau's death in 1862.

But in the 1870s and 1880s, critics attacked Thoreau's character and style of life, accusing him of crankiness and irresponsibility. In the 1890s a group of admirers who had not known Thoreau personally but who had been affected by his writings began actively to promote him. One of the first substantial biographies of Thoreau, The Life of Henry David Thoreau, was published by an Englishman, Henry Salt, in 1890. Walden was reprinted several times in both America and England during the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1893 and then 1906, relatively complete editions of Thoreau's writings were published, increasing the accessibility of his work and his general popularity. Beginning in the 1930s, interest in Thoreau began to rise markedly. Henry Seidel Canby's 1939 biography, Thoreau, reached the best-seller lists. In July 1941, the Thoreau Society of America was founded at a meeting in Concord .

Still active today, the Thoreau Society 's purpose is "to honor Henry David Thoreau, by stimulating interest in and fostering education about his life, works, and philosophy and his place in his world and ours, by coordinating research on his life and writings, and by acting as a repository for Thoreauviana and material relevant to Henry David Thoreau, and by advocating for the preservation of Thoreau Country." Thoreau's popularity continued: six editions of Walden were published in 1948, eleven in 1958, and twenty-three in 1968, along with many editions of his other works. In 1966, a project to edit and publish all of Thoreau's writings was undertaken by a group of scholars under the sponsorship of the National Endowment for the Humanities . Under the editorship of Walter Harding (1966-1972), William L. Howarth (1973-1979), and Elizabeth Witherell (1980-present), the project, The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, has published fourteen of its projected thirty-volume series with Princeton University Press .

The Princeton Edition of Walden was published in 1971. I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. (Walden, 323- 324) WALDEN POND AND WALDEN WOODS TODAY In 1849, Thoreau's house at Walden Pond was removed from its site; parts of it were incorporated into other structures around Concord, including a barn near Estabrook Woods.

Ten years after Thoreau's death in 1862, in a spontaneous tribute to the writer and philosopher, visitors to the pond began placing rocks, flowers, and twigs in a cairn on a spot near where the house had been. The cairn became a standard stop for pilgrims to Walden. In the 1940s, the exact site of Thoreau's house was located and excavated by Roland Robbins, and simple granite posts were placed to indicate the outline of the structure. The proper use of Walden Pond and Walden Woods has been the subject of debate for over a century. Should it serve as a public park with full access for swimming, fishing, hunting, and camping? Should it be preserved in a pristine state? Should commercial development be allowed? For several decades, the area has been open to the public for swimming and fishing. Those who have felt that the pond was threatened by overuse have been very vocal in Concord, and during the 1980s the number of users per day was limited by closing the parking area when a certain capacity was reached. During the same period, though, the town made it possible for some of the land around the pond to be developed.

When the door to development opened, two projects were proposed: a large office building and a condominium complex. These plans were brought to the attention of Don Henley, lead singer of the rock group the Eagles, by a group of concerned local residents. Henley spearheaded a campaign to preserve the area, and rallied political figures such as Senators Ted Kennedy and Paul Tsongas, as well as a number of actors and musicians, to the support of the Walden Woods Project (WWP). WWP arranged a number of fund-raising events, including rock concerts, movie premieres, and a "Walk for Walden Woods," and successfully negotiated with the developers to purchase the endangered land, as well as additional land in Walden Woods. THE LEGACY OF WALDEN In order to continue the process of education about the need for preservation, the Walden Woods Project turned to the Thoreau Society and its half-century of experience and knowledge. The Society and WWP collaborated to found the Thoreau Institute , which is owned and managed by WWP and hosts seminars and forums on Thoreau, Transcendentalism, and the environment. The Institute is also the repository of the world's largest collection of Thoreau-related research material.

The Thoreau Institute and the Thoreau Society promote continued interest in and research on Thoreau and his work. This essay was written in 1995 for an exhibit commemorating the 150th anniversary of Thoreau's move to Walden Pond and his writing of the American classic, Walden; it has been updated for inclusion here. All references are to Walden, ed. J. Lyndon Shanley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971). Walden Pond, Concord, Massachusetts Travel Guide Walden has unique ecology and geology as a 103-foot- (31-meter)-deep kettle-hole glacial pond. More... Access to the Park The state park's parking lot—the only legal parking available within a mile of the pond—costs $8 per carload for Massachusetts residents, $10 per carload for others, in summer. When this lot is full, the pond has reached its full visitor capacity, the parking lot is closed, cars are turned away, and no drop-off or walk-in visitors are allowed.

On any hot day in summer—especially weekends and holidays—this means the pond will reach full capacity and be closed by mid-morning at the latest. You may have to wait for the afternoon before it re-opens. Henry David Thoreau Thoreau , a school teacher, surveyor, pencil-maker, writer, folk philosopher and social critic, moved from Concord to Walden in 1845 and lived here in a simple one-room cabin for two years, two months and two days. During his stay he basically founded the study known as ecology. His observations of plants, animals, the passing seasons and his naturalist philosophy were published as Walden, or Life in the Woods, in 1854. Over the years, his life and work have come to exemplify living in harmony with nature. Thoreau's philosophy derived from the Transcendental philosophy of his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson , who in fact provided the land (part of his firewood lot at Walden) for Thoreau's little house. In essence, Thoreau lived a life that Emerson, because of his eminence and family ties, could not. More...

The replica of Thoreau's house ( photo ) is next to the parking lot, near the path down to the pond. The actual site of Thoreau's original house is a 15-minute walk around the pond, marked by granite posts ( photo ) ( map ). In previous years it was marked by a cairn built up by Thoreau pilgrims who left stones in commemoration of their visits. Getting to Walden Pond Walden Pond State Reservation, open all year, is near the intersection of MA Routes 2 and 126 ( map ), a 30- to 40-minute walk south of Monument Square . The beach and circumambulation path are free, so if you walk or bicycle from Monument Square in Concord to Walden as Thoreau did (1.8 miles/2.9 km, 30 to 40 minutes' walk, each way), you can enjoy the pond at no cost. If you come to Concord by train from Boston , you will actually pass right by Walden Pond: look for it on the right side of the train a few minutes before arriving at the Concord station.

You can walk from the center of Concord to Walden Pond along Walden Street (1.3 miles, 2.1 km, 20 to 25 minutes) or, more historically accurate, you can follow the Emerson - Thoreau Amble , a recreation of the footpath Emerson and Thoreau may have followed on their strolls to the pond. More... If you're driving or bicycling, from Monument Square in Concord Center, follow Main Street south and turn left onto Walden Street at the first intersection. Follow Walden Street (Route 126) for two miles (3 km), cross a major highway (MA Route 2), and look for the Walden Pond State Reservation parking lot entrance on the left a short distance farther along. The pond is on your right, on the opposite side of the road from the parking lot. ( Photos ) Walden Pond State Reservation Walden Pond State Reservation Daily Parking Fee: $8 MA Vehicle, $10 non-MA Vehicle Open year-round for day use only. All organized groups must call in advance to make a reservation.

Park Hours Vary Seasonally As of November 6, 2016, Hours of Operation are: 8:00am - 4:00pm The Main Entrance gate locks at 4:00pm and the Exit gate locks at 4:30PM sharp. All cars must be out of the parking lot at this time. The boat ramp is closed for winter on December 1, 2016 and will re-open on April 1, 2017, weather permitting . The park is open year-round for day use only. Call (978) 369-3254 for information related to capacity closures and other up to date information. Things to know before you visit in 2016: Construction Underway Improving Visitor Services for Walden Pond State Reservation Henry David Thoreau lived at Walden Pond from July 1845 to September 1847. His experience at Walden provided the material for the book Walden, which is credited with helping to inspire awareness and respect for the natural environment.

Because of Thoreau's legacy, Walden Pond has been designated a National Historic Landmark and is considered the birthplace of the conservation movement. Park Interpreters provide tours and ongoing educational programs. The Reservation includes the 102-foot deep glacial kettle-hole pond. Mostly undeveloped woods totaling 2680 acres, called "Walden Woods," surround the reservation. Now part of the Massachusetts Forests and Parks system, Walden Pond State Reservation includes 335 acres of protected open space so that visitors from near and far may come to experience the pond that inspired Thoreau. In summer the Reservation is a popular swimming destination. In the spring and fall, many people hike the trails that ring the pond and visit the replica of Thoreau's one-room cabin. Year round interpretive programs and guided walks are offered as well as a gift shop, bookstore and the Tsongas gallery. Maps and Brochures Thoreau's Walden - an annotated edition Why did Henry Thoreau live in the woods? - a quick answer A paper due soon on Walden? The Walden Express may be just your ticket.

Ask Jimmy: collected student questions & answers - the primary message of Walden One Less Accountant - "Thoreau and Emerson saved me from spending a large chunk of my life as an accountant. Walden had the approximate effect of a 2x4 thwacking me between the eyes." Thoreau’s First Year at Walden in Fact & Fiction - "What is it about Thoreau’s life at Walden that we find so interesting? Why does his experiment have such a hold on our imagination? More importantly, what was it like, not only for him, but for his contemporaries?" Out of the Woods: How I Found My Muse at Walden Pond - "Thoreau had said, 'How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.' And during this time I began to wonder, was I truly living?" Walden Pond: a First Visitation - "It has been 156 years since you left your house at Walden, Henry ... so I thought it appropriate and timely to issue an update about what 'progress' has been made at the pond." A contemporary review...

"The economical details and calculations in this book are more curious than useful; for the author's life in the woods was on too narrow a scale to find imitators. But ... he says so many pithy and brilliant things, and offers so many piquant, and, we may add, so many just, comments on society as it is, that this book is well worth the reading, both for its actual contents and its suggestive capacity." - A.P. Peabody, North American Review, 1854 100 years later... "Thoreau, very likely without quite knowing what he was up to, took man's relation to nature and man's dilemma in society and man's capacity for elevating his spirit and he beat all these matters together, in a wild free interval of self-justification and delight, and produced an original omelette from which people can draw nourishment in a hungry day." - E.B.

White, The Yale Review, 1954 Search for words or phrases in Walden in the Princeton Text Archive For the more obscure words - Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 Edition "Our problem today is that we have allowed the internal to become lost in the external ... So much of modern life can be summarized in that arresting dictum of the poet Thoreau: 'Improved means to an unimproved end'." - Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Lecture , December 11, 1964 "In Walden, Thoreau ... opens the inner frontier of self-discovery as no American book had up to this time. As deceptively modest as Thoreau's ascetic life, it is no less than a guide to living the classical ideal of the good life. Both poetry and philosophy, this long poetic essay challenges the reader to examine his or her life and live it authentically." - Kathryn VanSpanckeren "The best and most Romantic memoir an American has produced is Walden — though nobody calls it one. ... What Thoreau has to overcome during his time in the woods is not a lapse in mental health.

His great problem is to escape the mental health of his neighbors, their collection-plate opinions, their studious repetition of gossip ... There's not a note in the book of self-pity, or nostalgia. And why did he quit his cabin in the end? 'It seemed to me that I had several more lives to live.'" - Benjamin Kunkel SparkNotes: Walden: Where I Lived, and What I Lived For Where I Lived, and What I Lived For Where I Lived, and What I Lived For → Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, page 2 page 1 of 2 I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life . . . and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. (See Important Quotations Explained ) Summary Thoreau recalls the several places where he nearly settled before selecting Walden Pond, all of them estates on a rather large scale. He quotes the Roman philosopher Cato’s warning that it is best to consider buying a farm very carefully before signing the papers.

He had been interested in the nearby Hollowell farm, despite the many improvements that needed to be made there, but, before a deed could be drawn, the owner’s wife unexpectedly decided she wanted to keep the farm. Consequently, Thoreau gave up his claim on the property. Even though he had been prepared to farm a large tract, Thoreau realizes that this outcome may have been for the best. Forced to simplify his life, he concludes that it is best “as long as possible” to “live free and uncommitted.” Thoreau takes to the woods, dreaming of an existence free of obligations and full of leisure. He proudly announces that he resides far from the post office and all the constraining social relationships the mail system represents. Ironically, this renunciation of legal deeds provides him with true ownership, paraphrasing a poet to the effect that “I am monarch of all I survey.” Thoreau’s delight in his new building project at Walden is more than merely the pride of a first-time homeowner; it is a grandly philosophic achievement in his mind, a symbol of his conquest of being.

When Thoreau first moves into his dwelling on Independence Day, it gives him a proud sense of being a god on Olympus, even though the house still lacks a chimney and plastering. He claims that a paradise fit for gods is available everywhere, if one can perceive it: “Olympus is but the outside of the earth every where.” Taking an optimistic view, he declares that his poorly insulated walls give his interior the benefit of fresh air on summer nights. He justifies its lack of carved ornament by declaring that it is better to carve “the very atmosphere” one thinks and feels in, in an artistry of the soul. It is for him an almost immaterial, heavenly house, “as far off as many a region viewed nightly by astronomers.” He prefers to reside here, sitting on his own humble wooden chair, than in some distant corner of the universe, “behind the constellation of Cassiopeia’s Chair.” He is free from time as well as from matter, announcing grandiosely that time is a river in which he goes fishing.

He does not view himself as the slave of time; rather he makes it seem as though he is choosing to participate in the flow of time whenever and however he chooses, like a god living in eternity. He concludes on a sermonizing note, urging all of us to sludge through our existence until we hit rock bottom and can gauge truth on what he terms our “Realometer,” our means of measuring the reality of things Analysis The title of this chapter combines a practical topic of residence (“Where I Lived”) with what is probably the deepest philosophical topic of all, the meaning of life (“What I Lived For”). Thoreau thus reminds us again that he is neither practical do-it-yourself aficionado nor erudite philosopher, but a mixture of both at once, attending to matters of everyday existence and to questions of final meaning and purpose. This chapter pulls away from the bookkeeping lists and details about expenditures on nails and door hinges, and opens up onto the more transcendent vista of how it all matters, containing less how-to advice and much more philosophical meditation and grandiose universalizing assertion. It is here that we see the full influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson on Thoreau’s project.

Emersonian self-reliance is not just a matter of supporting oneself financially (as many people believe) but a much loftier doctrine about the active role that every soul plays in its experience of reality. Reality for Emerson was not a set of objective facts in which we are plunked down, but rather an emanation of our minds and souls that create the world around ourselves every day. Thoreau’s building of a house on Walden Pond is, for him, a miniature re-enactment of God’s creation of the world. He describes its placement in the cosmos, in a region viewed by the astronomers, just as God created a world within the void of space. He says outright that he resides in his home as if on Mount Olympus, home of the gods. He claims a divine freedom from the flow of time, describing himself as fishing in its river. Thoreau’s point in all this divine talk is not to inflate his own personality to godlike heights but rather to insist on everyone’s divine ability to create a world. Our capacity to choose reality is evident in his metaphor of the “Realometer,” a spin-off of the Nilometer, a device used to measure the depth of the river Nile.

Thoreau urges us to wade through the muck that constitutes our everyday lives until we come to a firm place “which we can call Reality, and say, This is.” The stamp of existence we give to our vision of reality—“This is”—evokes God’s simple language in the creation story of Genesis: “Let there be. . . .” And the mere fact that Thoreau imagines that one can choose to call one thing reality and another thing not provides the spiritual freedom that was central to Emerson’s Transcendentalist thought. When we create and claim this reality, all the other “news” of the world shrinks immediately to insignificance, as Thoreau illustrates in his mocking parody of newspapers reporting a cow run over by the Western Railway. He opines that the last important bit of news to come out of England was about the revolution of 1649, almost two centuries earlier. The only current events that matter to the transcendent mind are itself and its place in the cosmos. Summary One of the many delightful pursuits in which Thoreau is able to indulge, having renounced a big job and a big mortgage, is reading.

He has grand claims for the benefits of reading, which he compares, following ancient Egyptian or Hindu philosophers, to “raising the veil from the statue of divinity.” Whether or not Thoreau is ironic in such monumental reflections about books is open to debate, but it is certain that reading is one of his chief pastimes in the solitude of the woods, especially after the main construction work is done. During the busy days of homebuilding, he says he kept Homer’s Iliad on his table throughout the summer, but only glanced at it now and then. But now that he has moved in not just to his handmade shack, but into the full ownership of reality described in the preceding chapter, reading has a new importance. Thoreau praises the ability to read the ancient classics in the original Greek and Latin, disdaining the translations offered by the “modern cheap” press. Indeed he goes so far as to assert that Homer has never yet been published in English—at least not in any way that does justice to Homer’s achievement. Thoreau emphasizes the work of reading, just as he stresses the work of farming and home-owning; he compares the great reader to an athlete who has subjected himself to long training and regular exercise.

He gives an almost mystical importance to the printed word. The grandeur of oratory does not impress him as much as the achievements of a written book. He says it is no wonder that Alexander the Great carried a copy of the Iliad around with him on his military campaigns. Thoreau also urges us to read widely, gently mocking those who limit their reading to the Bible, and to read great things, not the popular entertainment books found in the library. Thoreau gradually extends his criticism of cheap reading to a criticism of the dominant culture of Concord, which deprives even the local gifted minds access to great thought. Despite the much-lauded progress of modern society in technology and transportation, he says real progress—that of the mind and soul—is being forgotten. He reproaches his townsmen for believing that the ancient Hebrews were the only people in the world to have had a Holy Scripture, ignoring the sacred writings of others, like the Hindus. Thoreau complains the townspeople spend more on any body ailment than they do on mental malnourishment; he calls out, like an angry prophet, for more public spending on education.

He says, “New England can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her, and board them round the while, and not be provincial at all.” Thoreau implicitly blames the local class system for encouraging fine breeding in noblemen but neglecting the task of ennobling the broader population. He thus calls out for an aristocratic democracy: “[i]nstead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.” 1 Walden Pond | Fallout Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Edit From 1845 to 1847, the author and philosopher Henry David Thoreau lived in a cabin by the lake. During his stay, he investigated the principles of transcendentalism by living according to this philosphy. He later wrote a book about his experiences. The cabin, in which Thoreau lived, is preserved. Before the Great War , the cabin and the audio tour associated with it is sponsored by General Atomics International . This may show an aspect of prewar society, as the humble message of Thoreau is immediately contradicted by consumerism and corporate involvement in everyday life.

Layout Edit The pond itself is small and highly irradiated (+10), with an island in the middle without obvious significance which smokes mysteriously. Up on the hill to the west, there is an automated tour box in front of a cabin that was home to Thoreau. Beyond this is a gift shop - a much larger building, which is booby-trapped with a few makeshift bombs and a clapping-cymbal monkey doll. Next to the master locked back door, held up by a knife, there is a "Note to Tweez". The note reads as follows: “ Tweez, If you are reading this, then you're an idiot. this is the last time I tell you, we're locking this door. Use the entrance in the sewer pipe. Next time you forget, I'm locking your ass out permanently. ”— Walter The sewer pipe mentioned in the note is found outside the cabin on the edge of the lake. Inside the sewer entrance, past the long pipe, Tweez and Bear can be heard talking about Thoreau and transcendentalism. In this first room, there is a hunting rifle, duffle bag, and an issue of Tales of a Junktown Jerky Vendor .

Walter and Whiplash can be found in the next room. The gift shop key found on Walter will unlock the safe in the room as well as the door to the gift shop. Additionally, Big Jim , a unique pipe wrench can be found next to a toolbox. There is a Vault-Tec lunchbox in the corner next to a bottlecap mine . Walden Pond sits in an area of the map that isn't very dense with map markings. Unmarked but interesting sites abound nearby: To the east is an unmarked raider hut. To the east-southeast is an unmarked trader house with many cats and four little graves with presumably buried cats here (and cat meat for sale), and further on a wrecked traincar containing a leveled suit of Power armor . To the south is a stonehenge-like formation of cars. A behemoth spawns here once you reach around level 15. They are the sort of cars that can be made to explode. To the south, on the Middlesex Expressway, there is an unmarked Gunners base. A bit further south is an unmarked location which appears to be some sort of old power station, constructed of red beams with an attached garage.

Look here to find a fusion core in a generator, but mind the stingwings . To the northwest, just below the dam, is a pond from which about seven Mirelurk eggs can be recovered, if the two mirelurks guarding them are defeated. They can be engaged from a distance from atop the dam, if desired. The dam itself supports random encounters . Notable loot Gift shop key - On Walter , opens safe and the gift shop basement. Note to Tweez - Next to the gift shop door entrance to the hideout, stuck in the wall with a knife. Overdue book - Under the cash registers in the gift shop. Vault-Tec lunchbox - On a box near where Big Jim is found. Related quests Raider Troubles - Troublesome raiders might take refuge at this location between two attacks on the Commonwealth settlers. Appearances Walden Pond only appears in Fallout 4 . The park, in which the pond is located, Walden Reservation is mentioned on a street sign for the Midcounty Loop. This sign is south of the Middlesex Expressway.

Gallery SparkNotes: Walden: Plot Overview Plot Overview Context Character List Walden opens with a simple announcement that Thoreau spent two years in Walden Pond, near Concord, Massachusetts, living a simple life supported by no one. He says that he now resides among the civilized again; the episode was clearly both experimental and temporary. The first chapter, “Economy,” is a manifesto of social thought and meditations on domestic management, and in it Thoreau sketches out his ideals as he describes his pond project. He devotes attention to the skepticism and wonderment with which townspeople had greeted news of his project, and he defends himself from their views that society is the only place to live. He recounts the circumstances of his move to Walden Pond, along with a detailed account of the steps he took to construct his rustic habitation and the methods by which he supported himself in the course of his wilderness experiment. It is a chapter full of facts, figures, and practical advice, but also offers big ideas about the claims of individualism versus social existence, all interspersed with evidence of scholarship and a propensity for humor.

Thoreau tells us that he completed his cabin in the spring of 1845 and moved in on July 4 of that year. Most of the materials and tools he used to build his home he borrowed or scrounged from previous sites. The land he squats on belongs to his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson; he details a cost-analysis of the entire construction project. In order to make a little money, Thoreau cultivates a modest bean-field, a job that tends to occupy his mornings. He reserves his afternoons and evenings for contemplation, reading, and walking about the countryside. Endorsing the values of austerity, simplicity, and solitude, Thoreau consistently emphasizes the minimalism of his lifestyle and the contentment to be derived from it. He repeatedly contrasts his own freedom with the imprisonment of others who devote their lives to material prosperity. Despite his isolation, Thoreau feels the presence of society surrounding him. The Fitchburg Railroad rushes past Walden Pond, interrupting his reveries and forcing him to contemplate the power of technology. Thoreau also finds occasion to converse with a wide range of other people, such as the occasional peasant farmer, railroad worker, or the odd visitor to Walden.

He describes in some detail his association with a Canadian-born woodcutter, Alex Therien, who is grand and sincere in his character, though modest in intellectual attainments. Thoreau makes frequent trips into Concord to seek the society of his longtime friends and to conduct what scattered business the season demands. On one such trip, Thoreau spends a night in jail for refusing to pay a poll tax because, he says, the government supports slavery. Released the next day, Thoreau returns to Walden. Thoreau devotes great attention to nature, the passing of the seasons, and the creatures with which he shares the woods. He recounts the habits of a panoply of animals, from woodchucks to partridges. Some he endows with a larger meaning, often spiritual or psychological. The hooting loon that plays hide and seek with Thoreau, for instance, becomes a symbol of the playfulness of nature and its divine laughter at human endeavors. Another example of animal symbolism is the full-fledged ant war that Thoreau stumbles upon, prompting him to meditate on human warfare. Thoreau’s interest in animals is not exactly like the naturalist’s or zoologist’s.

He does not observe and describe them neutrally and scientifically, but gives them a moral and philosophical significance, as if each has a distinctive lesson to teach him. As autumn turns to winter, Thoreau begins preparations for the arrival of the cold. He listens to the squirrel, the rabbit, and the fox as they scuttle about gathering food. He watches the migrating birds, and welcomes the pests that infest his cabin as they escape the coming frosts. He prepares his walls with plaster to shut out the wind. By day he makes a study of the snow and ice, giving special attention to the mystic blue ice of Walden Pond, and by night he sits and listens to the wind as it whips and whistles outside his door. Thoreau occasionally sees ice-fishermen come to cut out huge blocks that are shipped off to cities, and contemplates how most of the ice will melt and flow back to Walden Pond. Occasionally Thoreau receives a visit from a friend like William Ellery Channing or Amos Bronson Alcott, but for the most part he is alone. In one chapter, he conjures up visions of earlier residents of Walden Pond long dead and largely forgotten, including poor tradesmen and former slaves.

Thoreau prefers to see himself in their company, rather than amid the cultivated and wealthy classes. As he becomes acquainted with Walden Pond and neighboring ponds, Thoreau wants to map their layout and measure their depths. Thoreau finds that Walden Pond is no more than a hundred feet deep, thereby refuting common folk wisdom that it is bottomless. He meditates on the pond as a symbol of infinity that people need in their lives. Eventually winter gives way to spring, and with a huge crash and roar the ice of Walden Pond begins to melt and hit the shore. In lyric imagery echoing the onset of Judgment Day, Thoreau describes the coming of spring as a vast transformation of the face of the world, a time when all sins are forgiven. Thoreau announces that his project at the pond is over, and that he returned to civilized life on September 6, 1847. The revitalization of the landscape suggests the restoration of the full powers of the human soul, and Thoreau’s narrative observations give way, in the last chapter of Walden, to a more direct sermonizing about the untapped potential within humanity.

In visionary language, Thoreau exhorts us to “meet” our lives and live fully. More Help Walden; or, Life in the Woods | Henry David Thoreau | Lit2Go ETC Walden; or, Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau Walden (also known as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) by Henry David Thoreau is one of the best-known non-fiction books written by an American. Published in 1854, it details Thoreau’s life for two years, two months, and two days in second-growth forest around the shores of Walden Pond, on land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson, not far from his friends and family in Concord, Massachusetts. Walden was written so that the stay appears to be a year, with expressed seasonal divisions. Thoreau called it an experiment in simple living. Thoreau lived in close geographical proximity to the town Concord: “living a mile from any neighbor,” should be taken literally; he lived about a mile from his neighbors. He did not go into the woods to become a hermit, but to isolate himself from civil society in order to gain a more objective understanding of it.

Walden is neither a novel nor a true autobiography, but a social critique of much of the contemporary Western World, with its consumerist attitudes and its distance from and destruction of nature. Source: Thoreau,H. D. (1854). Walden; or, Life in the Woods. Boston, MA: Ticknor and Fields. Thoreau concludes the work by criticizing conformity in society. Year Published: 1854 Country of Origin: United States of America Readability:

Question: Who lived on Walden Pond?
Answer: Henry David Thoreau