Friday evening, my nephew Nathaniel stopped by to visit during college break. Over dinner he mentioned a course he was taking on Henry David Thoreau, the 19th century transcendentalist who had spent two years living in a cabin by the side of Walden Pond. I had read Walden recently and appreciated Thoreau’s experiment in self-sufficiency and simple living, as well as his clever style. I asked Nathaniel, did he think Thoreau was a nature lover or a social recluse? Then I wondered aloud why Thoreau had left Walden after only two years.
Once dinner was over, and Nathaniel had left, I summoned Odie the Labradoodle, and we piled into the car for a weekend adventure that might, it occurred to me, share some of Thoreau’s values. For us, self-sufficiency and simplicity would mean hiking barefoot, skipping meals, and sleeping in a lean-to. However, instead of two years, our trip would last two days. It would be like Walden, just in miniature.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden
The Long Brown Path 