Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Walden; Or, Life in the Woods

Boston

Ticknor and Fields

1854

"The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels."

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

Motion::Travel Geography::Paths Impressions Body::Feet

Reading

Henry David Thoreau, Walden; Or, Life in the Woods (Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1854).

Text drawn lazily from Project Gutenberg. Compare Digital Thoreau's Fluid Text version (based on Ronald E. Clapper's genetic text): https://digitalthoreau.org/fluid-text-toc/.

09/11/2023