Skip to main content

New England Reflections and Platypus Readings: Platypus Travels Part LVI/The Platypus Reads Part CCLXXIV

Our travels this summer took us all over Connecticut and Massachusetts on the trail of historic locations and famous figures.  One place we were particularly delighted to see was Walden Pond, the site a which Henry David Thoreau conducted his famous experiment.  Both my wife and I have taught a selection of Thoreau's works and it was a treat to see Walden complete with a replica of Thoreau's cabin (the original was sold for scrap shortly after he vacated it).

I don't know what I think of Thoreau's thought.  On the whole, he seems more useful as a critic than as any positive role model.  On the other hand, we had a nice long chat with a wonderful park ranger at Walden who had been inspired in her job by Thoreau's love of nature.  If Dana Gioia can co-opt lapsed Catholics as part of a larger Catholic literary culture, maybe Thoreau can be treated as a lapsed Puritan.  His thought, iconoclastic, numinous, visionary, and full of a wonder and love for creation, certainly helped to solidify the move from Post-Puritan to Yankee.  This Christ-less Quaker still followed the internal light and managed to become something of a secular saint.  Most times, I don't think he deserves that -maybe he approaches it at his best moments.

Thoreau has many disciples in modern America.  I can feel his presence hovering over Wendell Berry and Marilynne Robinson.  I have known people who have taken up the call to simplify and turned to organic farming (ironic since Thoreau spends much of Walden attacking the cupidity of New England farmers).  Some have flourished and some have failed.  I've had students who have connected with Thoreau, particularly his essay Walking.  These students often come from families that spend a good deal of time hunting, thought I've also had one who was a nascent park ranger who particularly seemed to get it.  I have the most success in winning new admirers for Concord's Curmudgeon on our senior year "Thoreau Walks".  These are hour-and-a-half treks into the woods and farmlands that surround the school spent admiring nature and reading aphoristic passages from Walking.  One of the tragedies of living in Houston is that each year the available open space to walk has grown dramatically less.  This irony is far from lost on the students and it poses a real challenge to the die-hard-libertarian-no-zoning tendencies that all Houstonians have as a birth right.

So where do I fall in the end?  Preserving nature is second nature to me.  I grew up in a town with at least three sizable parks and a zoning laws that set some 11-15% of the land aside as open space.  One of these preserves was behind our house and even as a rather inactive child I benefited from it ways I can't even begin to express.  The wanton devastation of the natural world I've seen in just four years of living in North Houston appalls me.  On the other hand, I don't know that Thoreau provides a firm foundation from which to resist these depredations.  A sneer and a suggestion do not a coherent worldview make -not even a coherent argument.  So, in the end, I think Thoreau is a trailblazer.  He clears paths and suggests possible routes.  That's all he ever claimed to do.  It's up to us to chose the way.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...
15 comments
Read more

California's Gods: Strange Platypus(es)

We've noticed lately a strange Californian dialectical twist: there, freeways take the definite article.  In other parts of the country one speaks of I 91 or 45 North.  In California, there's The 5, The 405, The 10.  Each of these freeways has its own quirks, a personality of sorts.  They aren't just stretches of pavement but presences, creatures that necessitate the definite article by their very individuality and uniqueness.  They are the angry gods to be worked, placated, feared, for without them life in California as we know it would cease.  Perhaps that's fitting for a land whose cities are named for saints and angels.  Mary may preside over the new pueblo of our lady of the angels, but the freeways slither like gigantic serpents through the waste places, malevolent spirits not yet trampled under foot.
9 comments
Read more

Seeing Beowulf Through Tolkien: The Platypus Reads Part CXCIX

After spending a few weeks wrestling with Tolkien's interpretation of Beowulf , I found myself sitting down and reading Seamus Heaney's translation of the text during a spare moment.  I came to the place where Beowulf presents Hrothgar with the hilt of the ancient sword that slew Grendel's mother.  Hrothgar looks down at the hilt with its ancient runes and carvings depicting the war between the giants and God and meditates on the fortunes of men.  In a flash of insight, I thought: this is the whole poem! Let me explain.  Tolkien believed that the genuine contribution of the Northern peoples to European culture was the theory of courage.  The Northern heroes, at their best, were men who fought for order against chaos -a battle they knew they were doomed to lose.  If they were true heroes, their souls would join the gods and aid them in the final battle against darkness and its monsters and again go down fighting, spitting in the face of the meaninglessness...
3 comments
Read more