Apparently I read this before, because I signed and dated it this exact week in 1993, and scribbled notes and highlighted passages. But I remember almost nothing other than disliking it. We read in such a perverted way in college,
skimming through to find chunks that would support whatever inane essay we’d
been assigned to argue that week.
It reads differently now, after eighteen months living out of a backpack, and six months in a log cabin in the woods. Monsieur Thoreau, c’est moi-earnest absurdity and all. His self-righteousness makes me laugh with recognitions-a great reminder to zip it on my endless prescriptions for a better world. But I feel such affection for this guy, working out his own system in the woods. A crank, but dear to my heart.