Walden on an iPad

I was reading some thoughts on Walden the other day, and I realized I hadn’t engaged with one of my favorite philosophical works in some time. I first encountered Thoreau and the transcendentalists as a teenager. Their emphasis on nonconformity seemed really punk at the time. Wasn’t Jello Biafra singing about the same subject? What could be more punk than building a tiny house in the woods and drinking homemade moonshine with the squirrels and other woodland creatures?¹

A few years ago, on a trip to Boston to visit my sister, we made a pilgrimage to Walden Pond and went to the site where Thoreau’s cabin stood. It’s now a scattering of rocks, some stacked in the way you would see in a “zen” stock photo.

I realize that some cast doubts on the authenticity of our friend David. Sure, maybe he took his laundry home to have his mom wash it. Still, as his meticulous records about what he lived on and by what means he obtained it show, he really made a go of his little experiment.

I’m surprised, with all the emphasis on minimizing digital time, that Walden hasn’t been coming up much recently. There are few examples of a retreat from modernity that capture our popular imagination like Thoreau’s deliberate sojourn into the woods. Of course, in my desire to revisit the transcendentalist’s seminal work, I realized I could always read it on my iPad.

1. There is no evidence this happened (other than the cabin part). ↩︎