You have brought Thoreau back to life- however brief it may be.

I connect to Thoreau in a deeper than to Emerson who is more cerebral- though I would not want to have to choose ( and I don’t have to).

Chris, I love that you call them “teabaggers” which I understand they take as an insult preferring to be called “tea partier s” .

Wonderful quotes- especially from March 11 1859- which I relate to- about what we have learned – really learned is from long practice and it falls from us like a leaf from a tree.

And I love the expression which I may be transposing here- that to write the kind of sentence you want to read, you have to first be the kind of person that writes that sentence– which for me translates to the feeling that one cannot really read Thoreau without recognizing oneself, one’s own experiences, thoughts and feelings. Then there is the elation of being connected through those experiences to the writer- in this case Thoreau, from another time, another place and space.

Wonderful.

“When I read Thoreau, I am not conscious of him or the book or the words which flow under my finger-tips, I am There. Through him Nature speaks without an interpreter. He puts his ear to her breast and hears her heart beat; and she speaks to me in her own voice. I am a part of the river, the lake, the field, the woods–I am a spirit wild and free. I see everything myself, no one interprets for me. I have the illusion of being free of my deprivations–I live my life in my own way.”

http://thoreau.eserver.org/letters1.html

“Last evening we had the “Conversation,” though, owing to the bad weather, but few attended. The subjects were: What is Prophecy? Who is a Prophet? and The Love of Nature. Mr. Lane decided, as for all time and the race, that this same love of nature — of which Henry [Thoreau] was the champion, and Elizabeth Hoar and Lidian (though L. disclaimed possessing it herself) his faithful squiresses — that this love was the most subtle and dangerous of sins; a refined idolatry, much more to be dreaded than gross wickednesses, because the gross sinner would be alarmed by the depth of his degradation, and come up from it in terror, but the unhappy idolaters of Nature were deceived by the refined quality of their sin, and would be the last to enter the kingdom. Henry frankly affirmed to both the wise men that they were wholly deficient in the faculty in question, and therefore could not judge of it. And Mr. Alcott as frankly answered that it was because they went beyond the mere material objects, and were filled with spiritual love and perception (as Mr. T. was not), that they seemed to Mr. Thoreau not to appreciate outward nature. I am very heavy, and have spoiled a most excellent story. I have given you no idea of the scene, which was ineffably comic, though it made no laugh at the time; I scarcely laughed at it myself, — too deeply amused to give the usual sign. Henry was brave and noble; well as I have always liked him, he still grows upon me. Elizabeth sends her love, and says she shall not go to Boston till your return, and you must make the 8th of March come quickly.”