Thursday, July 19, 2012

For the past couple of days I've been reading Thoreau's The Maine Woods, an account of his 1846 trip into my neck of the state. Thoreau has always irritated me: I have small tolerance for people who smugly expatiate on the right way to live. But I'm enjoying this book more than I expected I would. Perhaps because T is out of his element--"from away," as they say up here--he seems more wide-eyed and less sententious than I remember. Or maybe I was reading Walden in the wrong way. Of course it's always interesting to read a book about one's own neighborhood, and Thoreau's descriptions of the north woods are surprisingly recognizable, even 160 years later. And then there are the lovely, poignant remarks that arise in the midst of his journalistic record--
Before our companions arrived, we rode on up the Houlton road seven miles to Molunkus, where the Aroostook road comes into it, and where there is a spacious public house in the woods, called the "Molunkus House," kept by one Libbey, which looked as if it had its hall for dancing and for military drills. There was no other evidence of man but this huge shingle palace in this part of the world; but sometimes even this is filled with travelers. I looked off the piazza round the corner of the house up the Aroostook road, on which there was no clearing in sight. There was a man adventuring upon it this evening in a rude, original, what you may call Aroostook wagon,--a mere seat, with a wagon swung under it, a few bags on it, and a dog asleep to watch them. He offered to carry a message for us to anybody in that country, cheerfully. I suspect that, if you should go to the end of the world, you would find somebody there going farther, as if just starting for home at sundown, and having a last word before he drove off.

5 comments:

Thomas said...

I love that last sentence! I completely agree with you about Walden and have always felt guilty for my irritation with Thoreau's self-righteous smugness. This summer, though, I've been occasionally reading selections from his Journals, and they are much more graceful and pleasing, perhaps because he's not focused on proving himself right.

Anonymous said...

I've been reading passages from Thoreau's last manuscript, which is beautifully attentive to Wild Fruits -- not unlike you and your friends on your daily blog. In this way you and Thoreau are the perfect companions for walking and working in my yard, as my mind plays with a relevant word or photo; and I will return to my study this evening to listen to the remarkable music of "Thelonious Molunkus" -- a non-judgmental, welcoming centaur, who appeared for the first time to me this morning like a distant crossroad in a Maine woods.

Dawn Potter said...

I'm relieved to learn that I'm not the only book- and nature-loving person who dislikes Walden. But when I was doing research for my anthology, I spent some time with the Journals and was pleasantly surprised, which is why I ventured to pick up The Maine Woods. I think you may have a point about not being "focused on proving himself right." That makes a big difference in his attractiveness . . . to me at least.

And that last sentence I quoted is so lovely. It certainly does compensate for the smugness.

Dawn Potter said...

Thelonius Molunkus! You don't want to meet one of those on a foggy back road. It would do a lot of damage to your pickup.

Carol Willette Bachofner said...

I've not ever thought of Thoreau as smug. But I can see why one might so conclude. A better nature read (in my humble opinion) is Henry Beston's The Outermost House. I go back to this small book dozens of times a year and have literally given away 25 or so copies since 1966 when I first read it. It is the story of Beston's year on the Great Beach of Cape Cod in a shack he built. The book has been in print continuously since 1939. He and his wife, writer Elizabeth Coatsworth, gave birth to Maine's first Poet Laureate, Kate Barnes.