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A review by daytonm
Walking by Henry David Thoreau
4.0
I know Thoreau's faults as I know my own--his sanctimony, his arrogance, his hypocrisies. Most troublesome is his contradictory stance toward Native Americans, at times admiring, almost envious, and at other times erasing them, claiming the right of the colonizer.
But at the core of "Walking" is the very antithesis of the colonial mentality, a plea for wildness over dominance, immersion over alienation, "a Dismal Swamp" over "the most beautiful garden." I pray the environmental movement never loses this soul--the conviction that there is a better way of being in this world, that the necessary rejection of our industrial excesses is not a sacrifice but a return to and embrace of the bounties that surround us.
But at the core of "Walking" is the very antithesis of the colonial mentality, a plea for wildness over dominance, immersion over alienation, "a Dismal Swamp" over "the most beautiful garden." I pray the environmental movement never loses this soul--the conviction that there is a better way of being in this world, that the necessary rejection of our industrial excesses is not a sacrifice but a return to and embrace of the bounties that surround us.