A ‘Walden’ way of seeing the world: How I found calm in Thoreau’s words

Shortly after starting my career nearly 40 years ago, I drove through a summer rainstorm to claim a copy of Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden” that I’d spotted on a store shelf. Thoreau, the 19th-century naturalist and social commentator I’d first read in college, seemed good company as I began to balance the deadline-driven demands of my work as a journalist with my need to occasionally put the news cycle at arm’s length.

Decades later, as a suburban empty nester with fewer deadlines but a continuing need for thoughtful calm, I still pull Thoreau from the shelf each summer. His clarity and composure seem even more important to me these days as anxious headlines drain my focus.

I tend to connect with Thoreau most in summer, perhaps because his move to Walden Pond on the outskirts of Concord, Massachusetts, in 1845 began as a summer project. Thoreau lived in a tiny cabin there for a couple of years, growing much of his own food and recording his experiences in a book that many readers admire more as an adventure than as a practical model.

I don’t live in a small woodland house, nor will most “Walden” fans. But over repeated readings, I’ve gleaned four principles of mindfulness from Thoreau that seem as useful to me now as when he championed them nearly two centuries ago.

Find revelation in the familiar.

Although summer travel is a cherished tradition, I can’t routinely seek mindfulness by sitting on a mountaintop or booking a formal retreat. Thoreau, who famously bragged about traveling “a good deal in Concord,” found inspiration close to home. “Thoreau walked around his own small town thousands of times, with a relaxed attention that made it forever new to him,” Geoff Wisner, who’s edited several collections of Thoreau’s writings, including the recent “A Year of Birds,” told me. Spotting a bluebird in 1859, Thoreau describes it as “a speck of clear blue sky seen near the end of a storm.” 

Taking a cue from Thoreau, I try to make time each morning to scan the bird feeders outside my Louisiana home. Just a few minutes of this ritual, I’ve discovered, lowers my stress levels and leaves me more composed for the day ahead.

Keep a journal. 

Although Thoreau is best known for “Walden,” he also kept a copious journal that in one published version stretches to 14 volumes and some 2 million words. Laura Dassow Walls, a celebrated Thoreau biographer, told me in an email that she was inspired by his example to keep a journal herself. “I aspire to practice journaling as a kind of spiritual exercise in seeing, experiencing, and expressing the pulses and routines and surprises of life more fully,” she said.  

Although I’ll never match Thoreau’s diligence in recording his daily observations, I keep a small journal in my pocket, and having it near nudges me to notice little things. “Cucumbers grow ripe on the vine, hanging like piñatas in the morning sun,” I wrote from my window the other day. Journaling helps me see my life as a story, slowing its pace so that I can dwell more purposefully within each hour.

Embrace the benefits of working from home. 

Although we tend to think of working from home as a new thing, Thoreau practiced it at Walden, where he was busy finishing drafts of “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers,” “Walden,” and various essays. “It’s amazing Thoreau had time to cultivate all those beans, keep up with his family and his chores in town, take his daily walks – and, oh yes, entertain frequent visitors,” Dr. Walls told me. “Thoreau’s two-plus years at Walden Pond were the most productive of his very productive lifetime.”     

As he scribbled away at Walden, he was buoyed, Dr. Walls writes in her biography, by “the summer air, wafting through the chinks in the walls, carrying the scent of pine and the sounds of birds.”

I try to embrace similar pleasures on workdays at home, opening a door to enjoy an occasional breeze or birdsong from the yard, or taking a lunchtime walk. These kinds of respites remind me that wonder doesn’t have to be writ large in my life to warrant my attention; it can sometimes dwell within the fine print of an ordinary Wednesday afternoon as wind grazes my cheek or a cardinal flutters into view.

Find partners in mindfulness. 

Though often regarded as a loner, Thoreau was known to take people along on his hikes, something that on occasion seemed to sharpen his pleasure in what he saw. His friend Ellery Channing was a frequent tagalong, as was Ralph Waldo Emerson’s son Edward.

Though I’m a fan of solitude, a recent Saturday morning with a kayak club paddling a stretch of Louisiana wetlands reminded me that fellowship can kindle collective awe. I might not have spotted a turtle on a log as he drank in the sun if another kayaker with keener eyes hadn’t pointed it out. As I pursue mindfulness, the support of fellow travelers has helped me understand that the hunger for this kind of mental centeredness is a shared part of the human condition. It’s why Thoreau alternated between solitude and society, recognizing that they could mutually sustain his desire to live with attentive purpose.

What I’ve also learned from Thoreau is that mindfulness, properly embraced, is a continuing pursuit, something to practice without expecting perfection. He chastised himself for missing stuff, but the important thing, he pointed out, is to keep trying. “Be so little distracted,” he wrote in 1851, “your thoughts so little confused, your engagements so few, your attention so free, your existence so mundane, that in all places and in all hours you can hear the sound of crickets in those seasons when they are to be heard.”