Awakening.

For my second nature walk, I chose to return to Schenley Park. However, this time, I travelled farther and deeper into the secluded woods the park offers.

I wandered around until I found a quiet place completely cut off from both the golf course and the ice skating rink. I settled down on a nearby rock and closed my eyes. I attempted to imagine myself in Walden Pond and to feel what it would be like to live such a simplistic life. I was only able to do this imagination exercise for about two minutes before I got insatiably restless. The solitude was overwhelming, quite frankly. Thoreau states in his chapter “Where I Lived and What I Lived For” that he ventured into the woods of Walden as an experiment. He set out to detach himself from society and its extravagances, “When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, -that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality” (Thoreau, 68). I can’t understand how he accomplished such a feat without going utterly insane. Obviously he did not wholly remove himself from societal interaction, but for the most part he was alone in the woods for an extended period of time. Thoreau critiques society for its lavishness and, in observing it from afar, feels he is finally free to live a full life. In detaching himself, he is able to introspect on what truly matters in life.

I am a true believer in existentialism, as fathered by Søren Kierkegaard. Thoreau, in his experiment as a hermit, attempts to enlighten himself in a similar fashion. He claims that he “…wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to live cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner…” (Thoreau, 65). Trying to find meaning and purpose in life, to feel like you’re truly living is difficult. I don’t believe that by simply removing yourself and living in the woods one can find the meaning of life, so to say. I think that it takes years of exploring all realms of life to become truly enlightened and wise; it is in our personal experiences that our lives gain meaning. We have to make mistakes to find ourselves, to find out who we aren’t before we find out who we are.

Thoreau seems to believe that living the life of a hermit, however well or poorly he ultimately achieved such a goal, you are vastly wiser than everyone else. In living a simple and meager life, you are above those who cannot survive in the same style, “To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?” (Thoreau, 64). Feeling superior to everyone who does not have the luxury to sit around and philosophize is obnoxious. Everyone is capable of being “awake,” as he puts it. Wisdom and enlightenment come from within based on powerful experiences, not from living as a hermit in the woods.