Reflection on Thoreau

I just read Thoreau for the first time.  He sounds like a friend of mine whom I've known through times of near complete solitude.  This friend decided that stepping out of the channel in which most of us swim would yield Truth, a calling, or the unnamed variable.  Outside of that metaphorical channel, my friend found solitude and not much else.  He went to a place of nature in order to fix something in himself.  He only had a quiet intuition that swimming in that water was better because it carried him far away.

Thoreau life's work, as I see it, feels rooted in the same intuition as my friend's.  Thoreau's "dawn", that which he seeks, seems to come from his presence in nature: "We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep" (Where I Lived, and What I Lived For).  Thoreau seems desperate to arrive elsewhere, and he moves towards it slowly, with careful observation.  He goes on to say, "Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour".  These two quotes impress me.  Thoreau presents his intentions and how he will go about enacting them.  At first it seems too simple, to go into the woods to write for a life.  Then, I think it's just simple enough.  It is a reflection of the clearer waters he chose to swim in. 

As for me, I'm not compelled by the same intuition; other people are my choice landscape.  Solitude is an indulgence to me, and I indulge often, in order to return to the people whom I love, and to the people who fascinate, frustrate, and mystify me.  I don't want to understand the naming of tree bugs and fungi.  I want to know about people and their narratives, to eliminate the categorization that can crush us.