" AS I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented...
".... The wildness and adventure that are in fishing still recommended it to me. I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this employment and to hunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little acquaintance. Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation. She is not afraid to exhibit herself to them. The traveller on the prairie is naturally a hunter, on the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia a trapper, and at the Falls of St. Mary a fisherman. He who is only a traveller learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority.
".... When some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered 'yes,' — remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education — make them hunters…"
. . . . . . - Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
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2 comments:
And yet his views changed rather radically...
Matt, as you know Thoreau was both a bit of a fraud and a basketcase. He nearly starved, bought almost all his food in town (which he visited often), was NOT in the wilderness at Walden (he was camping in a borrowed hut in the suburbs), and was as ignorant as a stick. His writing is all over the place and he had a great deal of emotional volatility. So far as I know, however, Thoreau always understood that hunting (as opposed to killing) was the most likely way any kid or adult would ever spend time in the woods, and that is something he celebrated (spending time in the woods and field). I think the way we hunt (i.e. very inefficiently and very primitive) is exactly what Thoreau had in mind as an ideal form of hunting (if indeed he would admit to such a thing). It's not like you could ever live off of what a hawk or falcon catches for the pot, could you? Yet to hawk or run the dogs, you must be in tune to what is happening 100% of the time out in the field. You must KNOW things and see things and understand what they mean. Perfect!
P.
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