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Henry David Thoreau - Season 1 - Episode 02: Being Alive
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00:00Major funding for Henry David Thoreau was provided by the Better Angels Society, Jeff Skoll, the Mansueto Foundation, Tyson Foods,
00:12and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.
00:15Funding was also provided by the Tyson Family Foundation, the Neil and Anna Rasmussen Foundation, and by the Better Angels
00:23Society members, the Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment and Mark A. Tracy.
00:30Additional funding was provided by Roxanne Quimby Foundation, Jim and Mona Mylan through the HeartSpace Fund, and Elizabeth Kenney.
00:45In the spring of 1845, Henry David Thoreau was 27 years old.
00:52For years, he had dreamed of spending time away from society, so he asked his friend and mentor, Ralph Waldo
01:01Emerson, if he could build a small one-room house on land that Emerson's family owned, not far from the
01:08village of Concord, Massachusetts.
01:12Emerson agreed.
01:21I want to go soon and live away by the pond, where I shall hear only the wind whispering among
01:30the reeds.
01:31It will be success if I shall have left myself behind, but my friends ask what I will do when
01:39I get there.
01:40Will it not be employment enough to watch the progress of the seasons?
01:46Henry David Thoreau.
01:50Still mourning the loss of his brother John, who had died three years before, and facing an uncertain future, Henry
01:59was ready to try what he called my own experiment.
02:03For the next two years, he would live in a small cabin at Walden Pond.
02:08There, he could focus on his writing, while contemplating the natural world and himself.
02:17He begins a lot with Emerson's ideas about nature and civilization.
02:22He has to try to put them into practice and see how they hold up.
02:27He's not going into the wilderness.
02:29He's not trying to be a hermit.
02:31He wants to position himself on the edge of society to see if he could live there, get by, and
02:39be happy about it.
02:41His stay would be interrupted by an expedition to the wilderness of northern Maine, and by a night in prison
02:48at the local jail, both of which would expand his understanding of freedom.
02:56Writing about his experiences would change the lives of countless others around the world for generations to come.
03:04After you figure out how to live, what does that mean?
03:07He really reduces that question to its absolute barest terms, and then proceeds to see what he can learn about
03:17being alive.
03:35July 5th, 1845.
03:39Yesterday, I came here to live.
03:56On July 4th, 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved into a 10-by-15-foot house on the northern shore of
04:05Walden Pond.
04:07He had built most of it himself, cutting down trees to make a post and beam frame.
04:14Which friends helped him raise.
04:16He then attached siding from a shanty he had purchased from an Irish railroad worker, hauled up rocks from the
04:23pond for a chimney, and dug a root cellar.
04:27He moved in, bringing along his cane bed, green writing desk, a small table, and three chairs.
04:35One for solitude, one for solitude, he said, two for friendship, and three for society.
04:42Some people called it a lonely hut and a wooden ink stand.
04:49For Henry, it was home.
04:52My dwelling was small, and I could hardly entertain an echo in it.
04:58It was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping room.
05:03I enjoyed it all.
05:14July 6th.
05:16I wish to meet the facts of life, the vital facts, which are the phenomena or actuality the gods meant
05:26to show us.
05:29Life.
05:30Who knows what it is, what it does?
05:37July 7th.
05:39Tonight, as I sit by my door, I hear the far-off lowing of a cow.
05:46Why should I find anything to welcome me in such a nook as this?
05:54After the evening train has gone by and left the world to silence, and to me, the whippoorwill chants her
06:03vespers for half an hour.
06:06And when all is still at night, the owls take up the strain like mourning women, their ancient Yululu.
06:20On most mornings, Henry got up at dawn to tend to his vegetable garden, including row after row of beans,
06:28an endless task, only made harder by the woodchucks that dined on the chutes.
06:35Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with nature
06:44herself.
06:46I got up early and bathed in the pond.
06:49That was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did, renew thyself completely each day.
06:58His morning bath, he describes as a religious exercise, not just as some sort of random dunk that he took
07:06in the pond,
07:07but as a sort of ritual act that has suddenly a significance beyond itself.
07:15Thoreau also said I needed to clean the house, so I took all the furniture out, and the furniture was
07:21happy to have a little excursion into nature.
07:24He said, I almost regretted having to bring it back in.
07:28He waited until November to plaster his house, and before that, there were all these cracks where, you know, animals
07:36came in, bugs came in, and the air came in, and he loved that.
07:41In the afternoon, he often took long walks and made detailed field notes of everything he heard and saw, a
07:51practice he would continue for the rest of his life.
07:57Walking was a writing practice, a process of taking notes that would become the content of his journals, as inspiration
08:06would spark to turn it into a kind of larger mythology.
08:10What he observed fed what he would write about, but what he wrote about would also lead him deeper back
08:20into observation.
08:24Thoreau filled page after page of his journal with reflections on nature and the human condition, often referencing Greek and
08:32Roman literature, as well as ancient Eastern texts like the Bhagavad Gita and Buddhist sutras.
08:39He's saying, all of these texts and traditions have something to teach me.
08:46Thoreau is taking his own experience, and he's elevating it.
09:13Thoreau would find a way to incorporate many of these ancient teachings into the project he went there to write.
09:19A book about the trip he took on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers with his late brother, John.
09:28He strengthened and oriented himself in writing.
09:34Writing was a way of being alive that was deeply nourishing to him.
09:51I am convinced that to maintain oneself on this earth is not a hardship, but a pastime, if we will
10:01live simply and wisely.
10:07Throughout his stay at Walden Pond, Henry kept meticulous track of his finances.
10:13He needed to spend money on seed and other garden expenses.
10:18But he actually made money selling his produce.
10:21It cost him less than $20 to live there for the first six months.
10:27The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life, which is required to be exchanged
10:35for it.
10:36His goal is to remind us how much energy it takes, how much work it takes to make a living.
10:52His focus was on how much do I have to work to secure my sustenance so that I can do
10:58what I really want to do.
10:59Our life is frittered away by detail.
11:04Let your affairs be as two or three and not a hundred or a thousand.
11:11Simplify. Simplify.
11:16I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.
11:22To front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach.
11:30And not when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
11:40We all get lost in the challenges of everyday life.
11:46And our world has been set up to help you do that.
11:50As I understand it, the root of deliberate is from freedom.
11:53And it's to do something because you choose to, not because fate dictates it.
12:02On some days, he simply chose to do nothing.
12:09There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work,
12:16whether of the head or hands.
12:21Sometimes, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon,
12:30wrapped in a reverie, amidst the pines and hickories and sumacs,
12:40while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house.
12:47Until by the sun falling in at my west window,
12:51or the noise of some traveler's wagon on the distant highway,
12:56I was reminded of the lapse of time.
13:02I grew in those seasons, like corn in the night.
13:07And they were far better than any work of the hands would have been.
13:13He practiced doing nothing, which can be the hardest thing of all for many of us.
13:18He saw the beauty of sitting still,
13:20and he knew that if he just sat by his pond, reflecting in every sense of that word,
13:26he could find everything he needed.
13:28He says that one of his job descriptions is to know the nick of time,
13:32to be able to notch it on his stick.
13:34He wants to be present.
13:36He gets down and on the ground to look at the battle of the black ants and the red ants.
13:43At the pond, he goes into the shallows, and he finds a way to pet fish.
13:49Try that sometime.
13:51You have to surrender to nature and nature's rhythms if you want to be whole.
13:58And you will see things you never saw before,
14:01and what you see will mean more than it ever did.
14:09What sweet and tender, the most innocent and divinely encouraging society there is in universal nature.
14:20There can be no really black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of nature and has still his
14:28senses.
14:31While I enjoy the sweet friendship of the seasons,
14:34I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me.
14:38Here I know I am in good company.
14:51In his bean field, as he's honing his beans,
14:54he came across these arrowheads and stone implements of native peoples,
14:59and he gets a sense that people have lived here for thousands of years,
15:02whose lives are very much written on the land.
15:06He notices other signs in the landscape.
15:10He saw bricks.
15:11He saw cellar holes.
15:13He saw trees and bushes that are not native to Walden Woods.
15:19This meant someone had been there before.
15:21Who were they?
15:22Where had they gone?
15:24What was their story?
15:26For human society, I was obliged to conjure up the former occupants of these woods.
15:33The woods which border it were notched and dotted here and there with their little gardens and dwellings.
15:40In this 19th century American New England town,
15:42you think of this kind of thriving, very close-knit community,
15:46which Concord really was to a large degree.
15:49And then on the outskirts, there are other people.
15:52And Thoreau was fascinated by these people who were living on the edge,
15:56living very close to the land.
15:58These were people who had been enslaved in his hometown.
16:03In the 1780s, Massachusetts became the first state to make slavery illegal.
16:10But most black people in Concord had to choose between working as servants
16:15or scratching out a living on poor quality land that no white person wanted to farm.
16:23Sentiments don't change just because a law is enacted.
16:28The conditions of enslavement, of labor, those may change in the law.
16:34But in practice, it's really servitude for life.
16:40Using local lore and his own observations,
16:44Thoreau pieced together the stories of what he called these former inhabitants,
16:49which otherwise would have been all but lost from the historic record.
16:54As he's writing a biography of the green space that we know of as Walden Woods or Walden Pond,
17:00he's also writing the biography of a black space.
17:03Down the road lived Brister Freeman, slave of Squire Cummings once.
17:10There, where grows still the apple trees which Brister planted and tended, large old trees now.
17:17We're learning about a man who decided to claim for himself his new status as a free man,
17:24but he couldn't plant a larger crop,
17:27something more in line with what other Concord farmers were planting,
17:31because it's not fertile soil, so he's fairly able to make his way.
17:37Here, by the very corner of my field, still nearer to town,
17:43Zilpha, a colored woman, had her little house where she spun linen for the townsfolk.
17:48He describes the life of Zilpha White, who is eking out an existence.
17:55She spins threads and silks for the Concord women.
18:00She led a hard life and somewhat inhumane.
18:04One old frequenter of these woods remembers her muttering to herself over her gurgling pot,
18:10Ye'er all bones, bones.
18:14And he describes her as living a life that is cruel and witch-like.
18:19This woman in the woods who's overheard stirring a pot and saying,
18:24Bones, all ye are are bones.
18:27And later, he comes to a place where he says,
18:30You know what?
18:31She wasn't witch-like.
18:34She's hungry.
18:36East of my bean field, across the road, lived Cato Ingraham,
18:41slave of Duncan Ingraham of Concord Village,
18:44who gave him permission to live in Walden Woods.
18:47And the man to whom Cato is enslaved says,
18:51You have freedom, but you will receive nothing from me.
18:55So Cato begins to try to make a life for himself.
18:58Cato has tried to secure a future by planting walnut trees,
19:04but he's preparing for a future that he never gets to enjoy.
19:09What remains in the earth is central to African American history.
19:15So planting walnut trees is a way of understanding that they were there.
19:22And also, they have ownership.
19:26Ultimately, it is enslavement that kills him,
19:29because the terms of his freedom are so qualified.
19:34They're so mean-spirited.
19:37And this is the story Henry tells us.
19:41Why did this small village fail, Thoreau asked,
19:44while Concord kept its ground?
19:49Thoreau is asking the question at the heart of American history,
19:54at the heart of America itself.
19:58The question of why, after slavery,
20:00a community of formerly enslaved people could not be included,
20:06could not make themselves into a town that could survive and blossom.
20:12The gentlemen of Concord abandoned them to their freedom.
20:17He's trying to negotiate how there can be different histories alongside his at Walden,
20:23because he gets to move wherever he wants to,
20:27because he's a person of privilege.
20:29And all of that paves the way towards his increasing involvement in anti-slavery work
20:35and his outrage about injustice.
20:44The minister of the Congregationalist Church once said,
20:48who but some half-crazy, disgusted hermit would live alone and independent?
20:56So Thoreau's choice is a choice that his neighbors are going to think is really strange.
21:03Why would you live alone?
21:05I think he went to Walden not to escape human society,
21:09but to find a vantage from which to look at it, criticize it.
21:15I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud,
21:20or the Walden pond itself.
21:22What company has that lonely lake, I pray?
21:27I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture,
21:32or a bean leaf, or the north star,
21:36or the south wind, or the April shower,
21:39or the first spider in a new house.
21:43I had more visitors while I lived in the woods
21:46than in any other period of my life.
21:49Walden was basically the town's backyard.
21:52It turned out not to be a place of solitude at all,
21:55because he's right by the road.
21:57And this is the town's favorite fishing hole and picnic spot.
22:01He received visitors regularly.
22:04His friend Ellery Channing stayed with him for two weeks,
22:07sleeping on the floor.
22:09Bronson Alcott visited weekly.
22:13Others came by just out of curiosity.
22:17People are stopping by,
22:19and he wants to tell them what he's doing
22:22and why he's trying to simplify his life.
22:26Every day or two, I stroll to the village
22:29to hear some of the gossip,
22:31which is incessantly going on there,
22:34circulating either from mouth to mouth
22:36or from newspaper to newspaper,
22:39which, when taken in homeopathic doses,
22:43was really as refreshing as the rustle of leaves
22:46and the peeping of frogs.
22:50He frequently headed into town to spend time with family and friends,
22:55work at the Thoreau pencil company,
22:57and do chores at home.
22:59He also picked up supplies he needed
23:02and sometimes dropped off his laundry.
23:05When everyone pretends to hate Henry David Thoreau for exploiting female labor,
23:11they're pretending that the woman and his family were just domestic drudges,
23:16that all they did was cook and wash clothes.
23:19These women were leaders.
23:22They were taking in the dirty laundry of America that is slavery.
23:26So the laundry question is dismissive of all that
23:29and all the other ways he was contributing.
23:33He paid rent to the family his whole adult life.
23:37He did a lot of manual labor,
23:40as well as being a teacher, a nanny, and housekeeper.
23:46After learning the kernels and very last sieveful of news,
23:51what had subsided, the prospects of war and peace,
23:55and whether the world was likely to hold together much longer,
23:59I was led out through the rear avenues
24:02and so escaped to the woods again.
24:07He kept himself unencumbered.
24:11No romantic relationships that we really know about.
24:14He didn't have children.
24:17So the ties that bind ordinary people,
24:21he was free of a lot of those,
24:23and that was partly the basis of his freedom.
24:26He was one of the towns, in many ways, most social people
24:30because he walked around and talked to people constantly.
24:36Henry was a good friend,
24:38but he was a difficult friend sometimes.
24:42He expected so much of friendship.
24:45It's difficult for him to disagree with someone
24:47and still feel like he can go on being friends with you.
24:51One of his friends said of Thoreau
24:53that his thoughts burned like a flame in him
24:57because of the earnestness of his convictions.
25:01One of the ways he put ideas into practice
25:03is test them against other people's ideas.
25:05So he enjoyed the argument
25:07that it helped them refine his ideas.
25:11But he also had a sense
25:13of the other beings we share this planet with.
25:16This is a time where nature is either a threat or a resource.
25:21He's finding a whole other way to think about it.
25:24It was a real series of particular relationships
25:31with particular species,
25:33kinds of weather,
25:36even individual organisms.
25:39He considered the plants and the beans
25:41and the moon his friends as well.
25:44And he said,
25:45how could he ever be lonely
25:46when we're part of the Milky Way?
25:49Not all of us have such an expansive sense of friendship.
25:58One day in the summer of 1846,
26:02after a year in his cabin,
26:04he went to town to pick up a mended shoe.
26:08There he ran into the constable and tax collector,
26:11Sam Staples,
26:12who pointed out that Henry owed four years
26:15of state poll taxes,
26:17an annual fee that every adult male citizen
26:20was required to pay in order to vote.
26:24Sam offered to pay it for him,
26:26but Thoreau adamantly refused.
26:31I was seized and put into jail
26:34because I did not pay a tax to
26:36or recognize the authority of the state
26:40which buys and sells men, women, and children
26:44like cattle at the door of its Senate House.
26:49The economy of Massachusetts
26:51had depended on trade with the South,
26:54and they were still constrained
26:56by the times
26:57that actually permitted enslavement
27:00to exist in the first place.
27:02So by paying Massachusetts taxes,
27:05he continued to sustain this appalling,
27:08immoral, anti-American economic system.
27:12And then there's the Mexican-American War,
27:16which is not just a war between two nations.
27:20It's actually an American provocation
27:23and campaign to expand enslavement.
27:29Henry David sees this and decides,
27:33well, how is my name actually attached
27:35to these enterprises?
27:37Through taxes.
27:39The dollar can now have
27:41a different kind of currency.
27:43Henry was placed in an upstairs cell.
27:47He spent the night there,
27:49viewing his hometown
27:50from the fresh perspective
27:51of a prison window.
27:53Seeing more clearly, he said,
27:56the state in which I lived.
28:00Someone, probably his aunt Mariah,
28:03bailed him out.
28:04He was mad as the devil,
28:07Staples remembered,
28:07that someone had interfered
28:09and paid that tax.
28:13Within 30 minutes of his release,
28:15Henry found himself picking berries
28:17on Fairhaven Hill,
28:19surrounded by children.
28:21I joined a huckleberry party
28:23on one of our highest hills,
28:25he mused.
28:26And then the state
28:28was nowhere to be seen.
28:31The question of how to live
28:33a life of conscience
28:33is a major question for him.
28:36How do you go on living
28:38at a time when
28:40simply living your life
28:42seems complicit with something
28:43you find morally intolerable?
28:46Just a week after his night
28:48in jail,
28:49Thoreau invited the
28:50Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society
28:53to host their annual event
28:54at his cabin,
28:56commemorating the end of slavery
28:58throughout the British Empire.
29:01From Henry's open doorway,
29:03a slate of speakers
29:05addressed the small crowd,
29:07including William Henry Channing,
29:09a Unitarian minister
29:10who called for a new U.S. Constitution
29:13that excluded slaveholding,
29:16and Louis Hayden,
29:17a rising abolitionist
29:19who had escaped
29:20from the plantation
29:20of the powerful Kentucky senator
29:23Henry Clay.
29:25Hayden told the audience
29:26the tragic story
29:28of his wife and child
29:29being sold away from him.
29:32And Thoreau starts to realize
29:35that he had a social
29:36and ethical responsibility
29:38to speak out.
29:40He needed to give this
29:42his time and attention
29:43in a deep way as well.
29:46Thoreau began to write
29:48in earnest
29:48on society's obligation
29:50to uphold the principles
29:52of freedom and justice,
29:54culminating in an extensive essay
29:56that would be published
29:58three years later.
30:00It would eventually be called
30:02Civil Disobedience.
30:05Under a government
30:06which imprisons
30:07any unjustly,
30:09the true place
30:11for a just man
30:12is also
30:14a prison.
30:16It is there
30:17that the fugitive slave
30:19and the Mexican prisoner
30:21on parole
30:21and the Indian
30:23come to plead
30:24the wrongs
30:25of his race
30:26should find them.
30:28On that separate
30:30but more free
30:32and honorable ground
30:34where the state
30:35places those
30:36who are not with her
30:38but against her,
30:40the only house
30:42in a slave state
30:44in which a free man
30:45can abide with honor.
30:49In order to challenge
30:52the status quo,
30:53in order to recreate
30:54a new sort of society,
30:55there needs to be
30:56what Thoreau calls
30:57counter-friction.
30:58Slavery is
30:59a machine
31:00that is
31:02moving forward
31:02constantly.
31:04Friction creates heat
31:06and the machine
31:08itself breaks down.
31:11The human revolution
31:12in a single person
31:13can change
31:14the course of history.
31:18My Uncle Johnny
31:19went to prison.
31:21He encountered
31:22a young man
31:22by the name
31:23of Malcolm Little
31:24and Uncle Johnny
31:26introduced the role
31:27to Malcolm.
31:29The only place
31:30that a free man
31:31can abide with dignity
31:32in a slave state
31:33is in a jail cell.
31:34That resonated
31:36with Malcolm.
31:37That Thoreau would choose
31:39as a matter of honor
31:40a jail cell.
31:43Malcolm Little
31:44would later be known
31:46as Malcolm X.
31:48During his prison years,
31:50he was often
31:51found reading
31:52the works of Thoreau.
31:57People just don't have
31:59brilliant ideas
32:00about justice
32:00and redemption
32:01from an empty blank slate.
32:06Martin Luther King
32:07was reading Thoreau.
32:10Civil disobedience,
32:11the words of Henry
32:12David Thoreau,
32:13could be used
32:13to disobey laws
32:15because they were unjust.
32:17So a person
32:18like a king
32:19or Malcolm X
32:20found solace
32:21in what Thoreau
32:22was talking about.
32:25The first time
32:26Gandhi was imprisoned,
32:28somebody gave him
32:30a copy of Thoreau's
32:32civil disobedience
32:34for him to read.
32:36Thoreau was thinking
32:37on the same lines
32:39as he was.
32:40That's how Gandhi
32:42began his
32:43civil disobedience campaign.
32:45you need some
32:47adrenaline
32:48with someone.
32:49You need a booster shot.
32:51And his essay
32:52provides that
32:54even this late
32:55in the 21st century.
32:57How do we
32:58talk about
32:58problems of conscience
32:59when you're
33:00in the minority
33:01and you feel like
33:01your country's
33:02moving in the wrong direction?
33:04He said,
33:05I feel called upon
33:06to right the wrongs
33:07of my country.
33:14The tops of mountains
33:16are among
33:17the unfinished
33:18parts of the globe
33:19where there is
33:20a slight insult
33:22to the gods
33:22to climb
33:23and pry
33:24into their secrets
33:25and try their
33:27effect on our humanity.
33:30Their tops
33:31are sacred
33:32and mysterious
33:33tracts
33:34never visited.
33:38On August 31st,
33:401846,
33:42Thoreau left
33:43Walden Pond
33:44to join his cousin
33:45George Thatcher
33:46on an excursion
33:48to Katahdin
33:49in Maine,
33:50the highest mountain
33:51in the state.
33:54He brought along
33:55a small notebook
33:56and pencil
33:57to write about
33:58what he discovered there.
34:03He wanted to
34:05time travel
34:06to see
34:07what Massachusetts
34:08looked like
34:09a few generations
34:11before.
34:12And then come back
34:13and tell the tale
34:14of what he'd seen.
34:15That feels
34:15like the exact opposite
34:17of what he has
34:18at Walden Pond.
34:20It was a frontier
34:21that was very nearby.
34:24At the same time,
34:25he recognizes
34:25that it's not
34:26a pristine,
34:28untouched wilderness.
34:31You see
34:32industry.
34:33Bangor
34:34is the lumber
34:35capital
34:35of the world.
34:37Thoreau
34:38describes
34:39Bangor
34:39in 1846
34:40as this
34:42cosmopolitan
34:43city
34:44right on the edge
34:45of wilderness.
34:46He also
34:47recognized
34:48that he was
34:49going through
34:49spaces
34:50that people
34:51had worked,
34:52traveled,
34:53and lived on
34:54for thousands
34:55and thousands
34:56of years.
34:5713 miles
34:58north of Bangor,
35:00Henry stood
35:01on deck
35:02as their
35:02steamship
35:03passed a
35:03Penobscot
35:04reservation
35:05on Indian
35:06Island.
35:09He watched
35:10a native hunter
35:11get out of his
35:12canoe carrying
35:13a bundle
35:14of fur skins
35:15and an empty
35:16keg of alcohol.
35:19this picture
35:20will do
35:20to have put
35:22before the
35:22Indian's
35:23history.
35:23That is
35:24the history
35:25of his
35:27extinction.
35:28I observed
35:30some new
35:30houses among
35:31the weather
35:31stained ones
35:32as if the
35:33tribe had
35:34still a
35:35design upon
35:35life,
35:36but generally
35:37they have a
35:38very shabby,
35:39forlorn,
35:40and cheerless
35:41look.
35:43The church
35:44is the only
35:45trim-looking
35:46building.
35:47Good Canadian
35:48it may be,
35:49but it is
35:50poor Indian.
35:52These were
35:53once a
35:53powerful tribe.
35:55I even
35:55thought that
35:56a row of
35:57wigwams
35:57with a dance
35:58of pow-wows
35:59and a prisoner
36:00tortured at the
36:01stake would be
36:02more respectable
36:03than this.
36:06Oh,
36:07they're always
36:08saying that
36:09we're the
36:10last of this,
36:11the last
36:11of that.
36:13If you knew
36:14what the hell
36:15we had to
36:16go through,
36:17yeah,
36:18we look
36:18woe-begone.
36:20This was
36:21our homeland.
36:24These are
36:25people who
36:25have been
36:25robbed of
36:26their territory
36:27and forced
36:28to live a
36:28very impoverished
36:29existence on
36:29the margins
36:30of society.
36:32And what
36:32Thoreau cannot
36:33see is that
36:33he's part
36:34of this world
36:34as well
36:34and part
36:35of the
36:35process
36:36that makes
36:36this happen.
36:37Standing
36:38there with
36:38that postcard
36:39view of
36:40Indian
36:40Island
36:41looking for
36:42that noble
36:43savage.
36:45He's
36:45disappointed
36:47all his
36:47life.
36:48He's looking
36:49for relics.
36:50He's looking
36:51for relics
36:52and people
36:54too.
36:55Thoreau is
36:56not coming
36:56to Maine
36:58really to
36:58engage with
36:59Native people
36:59at this point.
37:00He's going
37:01to find the
37:01biggest,
37:02wildest mountain
37:02he can find
37:03and see
37:04what's on top
37:05and bring
37:06that back.
37:08once they
37:09reached the
37:10wilderness
37:10they continued
37:12under the
37:12guidance of
37:13two white
37:13settlers
37:14who knew
37:15the terrain
37:15well.
37:21On
37:21September 5th
37:2273 miles
37:24north of
37:25Bangor
37:25they paddled
37:27across
37:27Quakish
37:28Lake.
37:30We had
37:31our first
37:32but a partial
37:33view of
37:33Katahdin
37:34its summit
37:35veiled in
37:36clouds
37:37like a
37:37dark
37:38isthmus
37:39in that
37:39quarter
37:40connecting
37:41the heavens
37:41with the
37:42earth.
37:45After
37:46three more
37:46days of
37:47paddling
37:47they arrived
37:49at the
37:49base of
37:49the mountain.
37:51At the
37:51summit
37:52of
37:52Mount
37:52Katahdin
37:53it's
37:54unpredictable
37:55weather up
37:56there.
37:57If you're
37:58up there
37:58you'd be
37:58ready for
37:59anything.
38:00You're
38:00going to
38:00be tested.
38:02While the
38:03others set
38:04up camp
38:04Henry
38:05tried to
38:06reach the
38:06summit
38:06alone
38:07but
38:08failed.
38:09The next
38:10morning
38:10the party
38:11set off
38:11together.
38:13Thoreau
38:13scrambled
38:14upward
38:14in earnest
38:15leaving
38:16his fellow
38:17travelers
38:17far behind.
38:20I was
38:22deep
38:22within the
38:22hostile
38:23ranks of
38:24clouds
38:24and all
38:25objects
38:26were obscured
38:27by them.
38:29The cloud
38:29line
38:30ever rising
38:31and falling
38:31with the
38:32wind's
38:32intensity
38:33the mist
38:34driving
38:35ceaselessly
38:36between
38:36it and
38:37me.
38:38It was
38:39vast
38:40titanic
38:41and such
38:42as man
38:43never
38:43inhabits.
38:46He's
38:47freaked out.
38:48He was
38:49scared up
38:49there in
38:50a way that
38:50he had
38:51not been
38:51scared
38:52anywhere
38:53before.
38:55Henry
38:55never made
38:56it to
38:56the summit.
38:57He was
38:58forced to
38:58turn back.
39:00his companions
39:01were waiting
39:02for him
39:02below
39:03and following
39:04a stream
39:05they made
39:06their way
39:06to a meadow
39:07farther down
39:08the mountain.
39:10There
39:11Thoreau
39:11made an
39:12exhilarating
39:13discovery
39:13far more
39:15transcendent
39:15than what
39:16he had hoped
39:16to experience
39:17on the
39:18summit.
39:22He has
39:23this eerie
39:23feeling of
39:24displacement
39:25that really
39:26throws him.
39:28He's
39:29thinking about
39:30the fields
39:31in Concord
39:31and the
39:32field on
39:33the side
39:33of Mount
39:34Katahdin.
39:35These two
39:36places together
39:37familiar and
39:38strange.
39:39I'm not even
39:40sure he quite
39:41understood what
39:42had happened
39:42to him at
39:43the time
39:43because it's
39:44not until
39:45he's down
39:45the mountain
39:46and really
39:47letting it
39:48sink in
39:49and reflecting
39:49on it
39:50that he
39:51actually writes
39:52the memorable
39:53passage
39:54Contact,
39:54Contact.
39:57I most
39:58fully realized
39:59that this
40:00was primeval,
40:02untamed,
40:03and forever
40:03untameable
40:05nature.
40:07Here was
40:08no man's
40:09garden
40:09but the
40:10unhancelled
40:11globe.
40:13It was the
40:13fresh and
40:14natural surface
40:15of the planet
40:16Earth
40:17as it was
40:18made forever
40:19and ever.
40:21I stand
40:23in awe
40:23of my
40:24body.
40:25This
40:25matter
40:26to which
40:27I am
40:27bound
40:28has become
40:29so strange
40:30to me.
40:32Talk of
40:32mysteries.
40:33Think of
40:34our life
40:35in nature.
40:36Daily to be
40:38shown
40:38matter,
40:39to come
40:40in contact
40:41with it.
40:42Rocks,
40:43trees,
40:44wind on
40:45our cheeks,
40:46the solid
40:46Earth,
40:48the actual
40:49world,
40:50the common
40:51sense.
40:53Contact.
40:54Contact.
40:56Who are we?
40:58Where are we?
41:01You can see
41:02Thoreau finding
41:03language failing
41:04him.
41:05Who are we
41:06and where are we?
41:08Aren't questions
41:09you want to answer.
41:10They're questions
41:10you want to live.
41:14not till we are lost.
41:16In other words,
41:18not till we have lost
41:20the world
41:20do we begin to find
41:22ourselves
41:23and realize
41:24where we are
41:26and the infinite
41:27extent
41:28of our relations.
41:30The membranes
41:32between him
41:33and nature
41:33are completely
41:34dissolved.
41:35That sort of
41:36mystical,
41:37scary experience
41:38he brings
41:40with him.
41:42After two weeks
41:43in Maine,
41:44Henry arrived
41:45home.
41:46As he looked
41:47upon the familiar
41:48landscape that
41:49surrounded him,
41:50he realized
41:51what he had
41:52experienced
41:52at Katahdin
41:53could be
41:54experienced
41:55everywhere.
41:57And it was
41:58a feeling
41:59of wildness
42:00and his writing
42:02starts to bubble
42:03with all the
42:04extraordinary
42:04observations
42:05he's able to make.
42:07Nature is all
42:09around us.
42:10It's right in the
42:11tree that you have
42:12walked by every
42:13day of your life
42:14and then you see
42:15something new
42:16that you've never
42:16seen before.
42:18It blows you away.
42:23Speaking of
42:24autumn leaves,
42:25he said,
42:27if this had
42:28happened only
42:29once,
42:30it would have
42:30gone down
42:31in mythology
42:31as one of those
42:32events we read
42:33about in Greek
42:34myth or whatever.
42:35That suddenly
42:36all the leaves
42:37turn red and
42:38yellow
42:39and the forest
42:40was on fire.
42:42But of course
42:43it happens every
42:44year and,
42:45you know,
42:45we take it
42:46for granted.
42:47This is the
42:48wonderful way
42:49in which Thoreau
42:50sometimes shocks
42:51you into an
42:51awareness that
42:53you should have
42:53had yourself
42:54but you didn't.
43:11He did some of his
43:13most brilliant writing
43:14in the winter.
43:17it was the time he went to his journal with new inspiration and a sense of digging in
43:24exploring inner worlds and then he'd go out and do things like study ice crystals and come to
43:31great cosmic realizations from the smallest of things to the largest of things he loved cold
43:41in the winter of 1847 henry ventured outside not only to take long walks and ice skate but to drill
43:50hundreds of holes in the ice to collect data about walden's temperature and depth culminating in a
43:57unique map of the pond that same winter a team of irishmen came from cambridge to harvest 10 000 tons
44:07of ice to sell for refrigeration henry studied the ice noting the gradations of color its changing
44:16texture and how quickly it melted and imagine just how far it could be shipped perhaps the inhabitants
44:25of madras and bombay and calcutta will drink at my well he wrote so that walden water is mingled with
44:33the sacred water of the ganges this is a way for him to say profound sacredness can be found
44:40anywhere if you commit to seeing it march 26th suddenly an influx of light filled my house
44:54i looked out the window and low where yesterday was cold gray ice there lay the transparent pond
45:02already calm and full of hope i heard a robin in the distance the first i had heard for many
45:10a
45:11thousand years it was no longer the end of a season but the beginning
45:20spring rain brought new life to the woods and fields around thoreau's cabin and revealed an
45:27intriguing phenomenon that appeared in what he called the deep cut a man-made excavation carved
45:34into the earth so that railroad tracks could be laid flat when there was just the right amount of water
45:41it would burst forth on the surface and start giving miniature rivulets of sand flows
45:48he could see what looked like leaves of ferns the leaves of trees that would just be created on the
45:54bank i'm affected as if in a peculiar sense i stood in the laboratory of the artist who made the
46:04world
46:04and me had come to where he was still at work strewing his fresh designs about
46:13what is man but a mass of thawing clay there is nothing inorganic
46:21he sees life organizing itself through matter and he realizes that there is not only no divide between
46:31human and natural there's really no divide between organic and inorganic so we are in there we're like
46:38the dirt we're like the the trees we're matter we have been created by this world and we are of
46:46it
46:46and part of it he's starting to recognize the interconnection of everything even though we may
46:54not all speak the same language we ultimately all depend upon the same air the same water the same soil
47:03so the whole idea of a kinship with nature puts us in a place where we're responsible
47:22why i left the woods i do not think that i can tell i've often wished myself back
47:31perhaps i wanted to change there was a little stagnation that may be
47:38perhaps if i lived there much longer i might live there forever
47:44one would think twice before he accepted heaven on such terms
47:51on september 6 1847 after two years two months and two days henry david thoreau left walden pond
48:03he had completed the first draft of a manuscript about his river trip with john
48:09and he had also begun drafting a second one about his experiences at walden
48:15over the next seven years he would revise it multiple times incorporating ever deeper insights
48:22with each draft and combining his two years of experiences into one cycle of seasons
48:32walden or life in the woods would be released in 1854 the book would eventually sell millions of copies
48:43reaching into every corner of the globe he's not someone who turned his back on his society to go live
48:52in
48:52the woods he was writing a critique of the world he was born into and he thought that what nature
49:00gave us
49:01was a firmer place to stand i think there's a sense that if you walk and travel thoughtfully
49:09then the land will tell you things about what it means to be part of this rhythm of life
49:15that feels very different from the frenetic pace of the village
49:22i learned this at least by my experiment if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams
49:31and endeavors and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined he will meet with a success
49:37unexpected in common hours he will put some things behind will pass an invisible boundary
49:47new universal and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him
49:57and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings he says you will cross an invisible
50:06boundary crossing the invisible boundary is the experiment that he was in
50:12thoreau is trying i think to show us that the divide that we assume is out there somehow dividing us
50:20from the
50:20natural world really doesn't exist we must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake
50:29not by mechanical aids but by an infinite expectation of the dawn to carve and paint the very atmosphere
50:40and medium through which we look to affect the quality of the day that is the highest of arts
50:50his insistence on practice it wasn't enough to have an idea you had to live it
50:57if you wanted to reduce walden to its essentials i would say its message is wake up we're sleepwalking
51:05through life a lot of the time we have technologies for the avoidance of what's important
51:12look around you pay attention to what matters be conscious be
51:21he never is asking people to go put up a shanty by a pond he's saying each person is an
51:29individual
51:30so his message is to wake you up to your own life and then you follow it
51:38shortly after leaving walden thoreau wrote to his harvard class secretary in response to a survey
51:46marking the 10-year anniversary of their graduation
51:51i confess that i have very little class spirit however i will undertake at last to answer your
51:59questions as well as i can
52:02i am not married i am a school master a private tutor a surveyor a gardener a farmer a painter
52:14i'm a house
52:16a carpenter a mason a day laborer a pencil maker a writer and sometimes a poet for the last two
52:26years
52:27i have lived in concord woods alone something more than a mile from any neighbor in a house built entirely
52:35by myself
52:37i have found a way to live without what is commonly called employment or industry attractive or otherwise
52:46indeed my steadiest employment if such it can be called is to keep myself at the top of my condition
52:54and ready for whatever may turn up in heaven or on earth isn't the whole point of living an experiment
53:01is to try something out and if it works you can then take it out into the world but i
53:07think maybe he
53:08understood that the problem of how to live was not something he was going to solve once but that was
53:17going to be an ongoing problem and that he was going to solve it different ways on different days in
53:24different experiments through the rest of his life it seemed to me that i had several more lives to live
53:32and could not spare any more time for that one
53:37so
54:02do
54:11do
54:14do
54:33Next time on Henry David Thoreau.
54:35I had several more lives to live.
54:38The point was to take Walden back out into the world.
54:42New pursuits.
54:43Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.
54:47And new discoveries.
54:49To hear this unaltered Indian language, it took me by surprise.
54:53The thing he models for us is a life committed to ongoing investigation.
54:58Rustling leaves, they teach us how to die.
55:01Don't miss the conclusion of Henry David Thoreau.
55:05Scan this QR code with your smart device to watch the whole series.
55:10And learn more about Henry David Thoreau.
55:14The Henry David Thoreau DVD is available online and in stores.
55:19The series is also available with PBS Passport and on Amazon Prime Video.
55:25The digital companion soundtrack is also available online.
55:29The digital companion soundtrack is also available online.
56:14Major funding for Henry David Thoreau was provided by
56:17The Better Angels Society
56:19Jeff Skoll
56:21The Mansueto Foundation
56:24Tyson Foods
56:26And the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations
56:28Funding was also provided by
56:31The Tyson Family Foundation
56:33The Neil and Anna Rasmussen Foundation
56:35And by the Better Angels Society members
56:38The Keith Campbell Foundation for the Environment
56:41And Mark A. Tracy
56:44Additional funding was provided by
56:46Roxanne Quimby Foundation
56:47Jim and Mona Milan through the HeartSpace Fund
56:51And Elizabeth Kenney
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