Living in the Woods?

    For this week's blog, feel free to focus on or extend any of the conversations we engaged in together on Tuesday or Thursday. You might consider, for example, how Emerson and Thoreau's words resonate with your own beliefs and values. You might speculate about whether or not you--like Thoreau--could give up all of your worldly possessions (and technology) and live a life of solitude (for one year) in a secluded wood. Could you? What might you learn about yourself if you did?

     Thoreau's purpose in Why I Went to the Woods is solely to explain why he chose to escape civilization and move to the wilderness. He makes this very apparent in his introduction. He says, "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."

     In Why I Went to the Woods, Henry David Thoreau advocates the philosophy of simplicity. In other words, Thoreau wants humans to back away from the indulgences of industrial society and live with the fundamentals of nature. In his own words, "I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put out 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."

     Personally, I think that people do spend too much time focusing on insignificant things.  Our lives are "frittered away by details."  We consume on such marginal facts that we miss the big ideas.  I think we need liberation from our own values and culture because they have become corrupted.  One way of doing this is going into the woods.  In my opinion, I believe I could live in the woods for a whole year.  It would definitely be hard, but once I last a month I think my mind would be in the right place that it wouldn't matter the time period.  Right now I'm doing the Thoreau challenge where I give up all technology for a week.  For the first couple of days, I definitely had technology withdrawal, but it gets easier.  I believe as long as your mind is in the right place, anything can be accomplished.