Neck Beard

David Thoreau, dying of tuberculosis at his aunt's house...


When his aunt Louisa asked him in his last weeks if he had made his peace with God, Thoreau responded: "I did not know we had ever quarreled."


*****


I've read, I think, three of Thoreau's works. Everyone has heard of Walden, or Life in the Woods. Everyone read that one. The other two I read were Civil Disobedience and A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.


Each time I read him, it was like reading Morse Code for the first time. “.... . -. .-. -.-- -.. .- ...- .. -.. - .... --- .-. . .- ..-”  I had to translate. I read Thoreau slowly, as he chooses words that don’t seem congruent to the sentence he's constructing. I'd go back again, reread the previous sentence, then the next, then finally finish the paragraph. “Ah, I get it now.” I'd think. Or, he'd go off on a tangent for eight paragraphs, leading me to an antique Greek god, only to come around and tie that to the dragonflies he'd see outside his door. I found it slow going.


I can attribute that to the writing style of back then. Read Charles Dickens and you'll feel it in spades. Thoreau sat in his shed on Walden Pond, with all the free time in the world, cramming as much meaning into a sentence, as a calories in a eclair. He managed wring as much as you can out of that style from the 1850's.   You have to chew it slowly.


I came across people who read Walden and then had a short-term epiphany that how they were living their lives was all wrong and it was time to “Get back to nature.” Ok, fine. But what I knew of getting back to nature I learned from living near some woods and what camping was like. It's messy, dirty and at times pretty uncomfortable. The sun shining brightly over Walden Pond with a hawk flying by is a book cover. Live there in January when it's frozen solid and you'll have a better appreciation of getting back to nature.  That's, “Living deliberately,” as Thoreau says. Want to try on simplicity? Live there in winter as he did, and you'll realize all that matters is firewood, food and re-caulking the drafty leaks in your poorly made shed. Your life will be pared down quite drastically and you'll find some aspects of how far you go down, as shocking. Thoreau wanted to strip away life's dross and find out what it's like. So will you if you decide to try it.


To tell the truth, I came at the book Walden at the wrong angle. When I was told “This is the Answer to Life,” I approached it that way, being quite open about that idea, which, of course, fucked up the book for me. I came away from it not with any life changing views, but I appreciated Thoreau's balls to tell his peers to go fuck themselves, which was what he was doing his entire life, at times enough to land his ass in jail too. This book is not going to save you but it equates conformity with spiritual death. I suppose it would save many people from that, but they're not the type to pick up this kind of book anyway. I liked Thoreau due to his gumption to remain his own person and stubbornly resist those around him.


New England Transcendentalism was incredibly loosey-goosey then. I won't define it for you because I don't quite “get it” after reading about it. It's all over the map and the only thing you can take away from the whole movement is, “Tune In, Turn on to Nature and Drop Out.” If you read about the Transcendentalist authors from his time (and Thoreau was one), you'll find out that they were proto-hippies. Some of them created and badly managed 1850's communes (Yes, there were communes back then!). They failed because since everyone was too busy being their own particular person, no team effort could be applied to get the corn and wheat crops in the ground. Eventually, everyone drifted away because starving isn't much fun. Want individuality? You're better off doing what Thoreau did and live alone. You'll only have yourself to argue with.


If you want something a wee bit lighter than that, read his Concord/Merrimack River book. It's a travelog, but he'll describe the way the water splits around the bow of his canoe for a while. Even so, the descriptions of a New England that exists only in upper Maine now, are pretty cool.

Most times when I see portraits of "back then," I'm hit with the sober seriousness they all seem to show. Well, grainy black and white pictures can do that.  That and the fact NO ONE washed their hair back then. But even then, Thoreau blew convention off by wearing a  'neck beard."  Apparently he got a lot of guff from those around him wearing such a singular, goofy style.