Solitude

This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense,

and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a

strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along the

stony shore of the pond in my shirt-sleeves, though it is cool as

well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me,

all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs trump

to usher in the night, and the note of the whip-poor-will is borne

on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the

fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet,

like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled. These small

waves raised by the evening wind are as remote from storm as the

smooth reflecting surface. Though it is now dark, the wind still

blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and some

creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose is never

complete. The wildest animals do not repose, but seek their prey

now; the fox, and skunk, and rabbit, now roam the fields and woods

without fear. They are Natures watchmen -- links which connect the

days of animated life.

When I return to my house I find that visitors have been there

and left their cards, either a bunch of flowers, or a wreath of

evergreen, or a name in pencil on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip.

They who come rarely to the woods take some little piece of the

forest into their hands to play with by the way, which they leave,

either intentionally or accidentally. One has peeled a willow wand,

woven it into a ring, and dropped it on my table. I could always

tell if visitors had called in my absence, either by the bended

twigs or grass, or the print of their shoes, and generally of what

sex or age or quality they were by some slight trace left, as a

flower dropped, or a bunch of grass plucked and thrown away, even as

far off as the railroad, half a mile distant, or by the lingering

odor of a cigar or pipe. Nay, I was frequently notified of the

passage of a traveller along the highway sixty rods off by the scent

of his pipe.

There is commonly sufficient space about us. Our horizon is

never quite at our elbows. The thick wood is not just at our door,

nor the pond, but somewhat is always clearing, familiar and worn by

us, appropriated and fenced in some way, and reclaimed from Nature.

For what reason have I this vast range and circuit, some square

miles of unfrequented forest, for my privacy, abandoned to me by

men? My nearest neighbor is a mile distant, and no house is visible

from any place but the hill-tops within half a mile of my own. I

have my horizon bounded by woods all to myself; a distant view of

the railroad where it touches the pond on the one hand, and of the

fence which skirts the woodland road on the other. But for the most

part it is as solitary where I live as on the prairies. It is as

much Asia or Africa as New England. I have, as it were, my own sun

and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself. At night

there was never a traveller passed my house, or knocked at my door,

more than if I were the first or last man; unless it were in the

spring, when at long intervals some came from the village to fish

for pouts -- they plainly fished much more in the Walden Pond of

their own natures, and baited their hooks with darkness -- but they

soon retreated, usually with light baskets, and left "the world to

darkness and to me," and the black kernel of the night was never

profaned by any human neighborhood. I believe that men are

generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are

all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced.

Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the

most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any natural

object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man.

There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst

of Nature and has his senses still. There was never yet such a

storm but it was AEolian music to a healthy and innocent ear.

Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar

sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that

nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters

my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and

melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them,

it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so

long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the

potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on

the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me.

Sometimes, when I compare myself with other men, it seems as if I

were more favored by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I

am conscious of; as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands

which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded.

I do not flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me. I

have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of

solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the

woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man

was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was

something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a

slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In

the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was

suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in

the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around

my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once

like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of

human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them

since. Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy

and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence

of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accustomed

to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of blood to me

and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that I thought no

place could ever be strange to me again.

"Mourning untimely consumes the sad;

Few are their days in the land of the living,

Beautiful daughter of Toscar."

Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain-storms in

the spring or fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon

as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and

pelting; when an early twilight ushered in a long evening in which

many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves. In those

driving northeast rains which tried the village houses so, when the

maids stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the

deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which was all

entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection. In one heavy

thunder-shower the lightning struck a large pitch pine across the

pond, making a very conspicuous and perfectly regular spiral groove

from top to bottom, an inch or more deep, and four or five inches

wide, as you would groove a walking-stick. I passed it again the

other day, and was struck with awe on looking up and beholding that

mark, now more distinct than ever, where a terrific and resistless

bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight years ago. Men

frequently say to me, "I should think you would feel lonesome down

there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and

nights especially." I am tempted to reply to such -- This whole

earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart,

think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star,

the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments?

Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? This

which you put seems to me not to be the most important question.

What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows

and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs

can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want

most to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the

post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the

grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate,

but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our

experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near

the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This will vary

with different natures, but this is the place where a wise man will

dig his cellar.... I one evening overtook one of my townsmen, who

has accumulated what is called "a handsome property" -- though I

never got a fair view of it -- on the Walden road, driving a pair of

cattle to market, who inquired of me how I could bring my mind to

give up so many of the comforts of life. I answered that I was very

sure I liked it passably well; I was not joking. And so I went home

to my bed, and left him to pick his way through the darkness and the

mud to Brighton -- or Bright-town -- which place he would reach some

time in the morning.

Any prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead man makes

indifferent all times and places. The place where that may occur is

always the same, and indescribably pleasant to all our senses. For

the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to

make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our

distraction. Nearest to all things is that power which fashions

their being. Next to us the grandest laws are continually being

executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with

whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.

"How vast and profound is the influence of the subtile powers of

Heaven and of Earth!"

"We seek to perceive them, and we do not see them; we seek to

hear them, and we do not hear them; identified with the substance of

things, they cannot be separated from them."

"They cause that in all the universe men purify and sanctify

their hearts, and clothe themselves in their holiday garments to

offer sacrifices and oblations to their ancestors. It is an ocean

of subtile intelligences. They are everywhere, above us, on our

left, on our right; they environ us on all sides."

We are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little

interesting to me. Can we not do without the society of our gossips

a little while under these circumstances -- have our own thoughts to

cheer us? Confucius says truly, "Virtue does not remain as an

abandoned orphan; it must of necessity have neighbors."

With thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a

conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and

their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a

torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the

driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I

may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may

not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much

more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak,

of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness

by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However

intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism

of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but

spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is

no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of

life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction,

a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This

doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time.

To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and

dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that

was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more

lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our

chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be

where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that

intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent

student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as

solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in

the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel

lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he

cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but

must be where he can "see the folks," and recreate, and, as he

thinks, remunerate himself for his days solitude; and hence he

wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and

most of the day without ennui and "the blues"; but he does not

realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in

his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in

turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does,

though it may be a more condensed form of it.

Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals,

not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We

meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of

that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a

certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this

frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war.

We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the

fireside every night; we live thick and are in each others way, and

stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect

for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all

important and hearty communications. Consider the girls in a

factory -- never alone, hardly in their dreams. It would be better

if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live.

The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.

I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and

exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by

the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his

diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be

real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we

may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural

society, and come to know that we are never alone.

I have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the

morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few comparisons, that

some one may convey an idea of my situation. I am no more lonely

than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond

itself. What company has that lonely lake, I pray? And yet it has

not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of

its waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there

sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone --

but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of

company; he is legion. I am no more lonely than a single mullein or

dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly,

or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a

weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April

shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.

I have occasional visits in the long winter evenings, when the

snow falls fast and the wind howls in the wood, from an old settler

and original proprietor, who is reported to have dug Walden Pond,

and stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods; who tells me stories

of old time and of new eternity; and between us we manage to pass a

cheerful evening with social mirth and pleasant views of things,

even without apples or cider -- a most wise and humorous friend,

whom I love much, who keeps himself more secret than ever did Goffe

or Whalley; and though he is thought to be dead, none can show where

he is buried. An elderly dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood,

invisible to most persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to

stroll sometimes, gathering simples and listening to her fables; for

she has a genius of unequalled fertility, and her memory runs back

farther than mythology, and she can tell me the original of every

fable, and on what fact every one is founded, for the incidents

occurred when she was young. A ruddy and lusty old dame, who

delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all

her children yet.

The indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature -- of sun

and wind and rain, of summer and winter -- such health, such cheer,

they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race,

that all Nature would be affected, and the suns brightness fade,

and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and

the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if any

man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have

intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable

mould myself?

What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contented?

Not my or thy great-grandfathers, but our great-grandmother

Natures universal, vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has

kept herself young always, outlived so many old Parrs in her day,

and fed her health with their decaying fatness. For my panacea,

instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture dipped from Acheron

and the Dead Sea, which come out of those long shallow

black-schooner looking wagons which we sometimes see made to carry

bottles, let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning

air! If men will not drink of this at the fountainhead of the day,

why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for

the benefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to

morning time in this world. But remember, it will not keep quite

till noonday even in the coolest cellar, but drive out the stopples

long ere that and follow westward the steps of Aurora. I am no

worshipper of Hygeia, who was the daughter of that old herb-doctor

AEsculapius, and who is represented on monuments holding a serpent

in one hand, and in the other a cup out of which the serpent

sometimes drinks; but rather of Hebe, cup-bearer to Jupiter, who was

the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce, and who had the power of

restoring gods and men to the vigor of youth. She was probably the

only thoroughly sound-conditioned, healthy, and robust young lady

that ever walked the globe, and wherever she came it was spring.