Outdoor Literature

Transcendental Generation: Youth

1801 - Thomas Jefferson is sworn in as the 3rd President of the

United States

.
1803 - The United States purchases the Louisiana Territory for $15 million, containing what is now Arkansas, part of Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, part of Minnesota, Missouri, part of Montana, part of North Dakota, part of Oklahoma, South Dakota, and part of Wyoming.
1804 - Louis & Clark begin their expedition of the Louisiana Territory.
1816 - From 1816 to 1840, 3,000 miles of canals were built

Transcendental Generation: Rising Adults & Midlife

1830 - Mormon Church organized by Joseph Smith in Fayette New York.
1830's - Two Thousand miles of railroads built.
1841 - Brook Farm Commune set-up by New England transcendental intellectuals. Lasts until 1846.
1845 - Thoreau begins building a cabin beside Walden pond. He stays there until 1847.
1848 - Gold discovered in California. 80,000 prospectors emigrate in 1849
1854 - Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden

Transcendental Generation: Midlife & Elders

1861 - Abraham Lincoln is sworn in as the 16th President of the

United States

.
1862 - Thoreau dies
1869 - The Transcontinental Railroad is completed at Promontory Point, Utah.
1872 - Congress establish first national park: Yellowstone

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

References to rature are found throughout Walden. He observes the pond, bird-life and animals through all seasons. When people think of Walden, they think that this is a book about a fellow who builds a cabin and enjoys the beauties of nature. That true, but when you understand transcendentalism, you know why. It an important stage in life, because through nature you discover truths and develop a divine consciousness.

Thoreau shares his spiritual gains by writing and publishing Walden. At the beginning he brags "lustily." Like other transcendentalists, Thoreau was a strong moralist. He constantly tries to alert his readers to their potential for spiritual growth. His celebration of life and his call for men and women to recognize this pathway to spiritual growth is the core unifying theme of Walden.

Survey of Outdoor Education Literature (PE 440 )
	Ron Watters, Professor Emeritus of Outdoor Education
	Day 3 Lecture Notes Lecture Notes: Day # 3 We begin by looking at Thoreau through the eyes of his generation. (He was born in 1817.) The following are a few events that occurred during the lives of the Transcendental generation: Transcendental Generation: Youth 1801 - Thomas Jefferson is sworn in as the 3rd President of the United States. 1803 - The United States purchases the Louisiana Territory for $15 million, containing what is now Arkansas, part of Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, part of Minnesota, Missouri, part of Montana, part of North Dakota, part of Oklahoma, South Dakota, and part of Wyoming. 1804 - Louis & Clark begin their expedition of the Louisiana Territory. 1816 - From 1816 to 1840, 3,000 miles of canals were built Transcendental Generation: Rising Adults & Midlife 1830 - Mormon Church organized by Joseph Smith in Fayette New York. 1830's - Two Thousand miles of railroads built. 1841 - Brook Farm Commune set-up by New England transcendental intellectuals. Lasts until 1846. 1845 - Thoreau begins building a cabin beside Walden pond. He stays there until 1847. 1848 - Gold discovered in California. 80,000 prospectors emigrate in 1849 1854 - Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden Transcendental Generation: Midlife & Elders 1861 - Abraham Lincoln is sworn in as the 16th President of the United States. 1862 - Thoreau dies 1869 - The Transcontinental Railroad is completed at Promontory Point, Utah. 1872 - Congress establish first national park: Yellowstone Background information on Thoreau Thoreau lived most of his life in Concord, 20 miles west of Boston. His father owned a pencil factory and made fine pencils. Concord was a quite, rural community. His father had enough money to send Thoreau to Harvard (he graduated from Harvard in 1837). At Harvard he was thoroughly steeped in transcendentalism. And there he learned much about Ralph Waldo Emerson who was one of the leaders of the transcendental movement. After Harvard, he tried teaching but quickly decided that he wasn't cut out to be a teacher. He went back to making pencils and did some surveying. In 1841, he moved into Emerson's household. He worked as handyman, but he and Emerson had long discussions about transcendentalism. Emerson served as the editor of the Dial, a transcendental journal, and had Thoreau edit one of the issues. In 1845 Emerson allowed Thoreau to use a piece of property that he owed, located on the shore of Walden Pond. There Thoreau wanted to build a cabin and live close to nature. He had also planned to finish work on a book he was writing: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. He lived there for two years. He would live 15 more years. During that time, he spent some more time at Emerson's, rented a room in his parent's home, did some surveying, and worked in the pencil factory. In 1849 he published A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. It sold only a couple hundred copies. Sometime after his two year experience at Walden, he began to write about it. He tried to avoid the pitfalls of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. One pitfall was the serious tone of the book. He tried to lighten up Walden by adding humor here and there. Walden was more successful than A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, but it never sold very many copies, at least nothing like Emerson's books. It wouldn't be until the next century that Thoreau's Walden would be recognized as one of the great works of American literature. Transcendentalism Walden is best understood through the lens of transcendentalism, and let's spend a little time looking at it. The transcendental movement was the result of religious controversy with the Unitarian church. Some within the church felt that it was too rational, too commonsense, too much by the rule-book, that it lacked feeling and mystery. They lamented the loss of a deeply felt religious experience. Of the transcendentalists, the most important was Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson and transcendentalists said that man is not limited simply to learning about God, but man's mind can create a consciousness of God. The mind is powerful instrument, capable of imagination, intuition. Emerson believed that every man, through the power of his intellect, has the ability to become god-like. You can see the importance of imagination in Walden when Thoreau wrote: "I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor." Look at this passage written by Thoreau from the conclusion: "I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." That's transcendentalism. Previously we have learned that the taming of the American wilderness took on a religious connotation as pioneers cleared the land and subdued it (to use the biblical term). Let's look at bit more at religious terms: Deism - Belief in God on evidence of reason and nature. A deist might say that she believes in God because of the regular pattern of stars. Or the rotation of the earth every 24 hours. Transcendentalism. A transcendentalist doesn't need to use reason to believe in God. A transcendentalist can feel God's presence through imagination and intuition. We'll use the Grand Canyon as an example . . . A deist would look at the Grand Canyon. He would see the layers of rock: Redwall Limestone, Tapeats Sandstone and Zoraster Granite and say that he believes in God. A transcendentalist, on the other hand, would take in the beauty of the canyon, and through her imagination, see God presence. More Terms… Calvinism. Strictness in religious belief. The idea of strictness comes from John Calvin (1500's), a protestant who believed in the authority of the scriptures and that strict church discipline was necessary. Puritans. The Puritans, likewise, wanted to greater strictness in religious discipline. Strictness was necessary because the Puritans feared the innate sinfulness of man. In a wilderness men and women would go wild. They would become beasts and sinners. They would fall into the life of the unregenerate (a life with the absence of belief). Transcendentalists, however, believed in man's basic goodness. Man would not turn into beasts. In fact, it was just the opposite. Primitive lands and nature would help man gain insights into spiritual truths. Emerson talked theoretically about transcendentalism, but Thoreau actually lived the life of a transcendentalist in his 2-year experience at Walden. The Three Stages of a Transcendental Life: Emerson described three basis stages of a transcendentalist life: 1. He or she learns all that is of merit in the wisdom of the past (comes largely through reading). 2. He or she establishes a harmonious relationship with nature--through which he or she is able to discover ethical truths and communicate with the divine. 3. After being nurtured by books and nature, he/she must share his or her spiritual gains with other men or women. With this philosophical background, things in Walden begin to fall in place: 1. He or she learns all that is of merit in the wisdom of the past (comes largely through reading). Thoreau makes many references to the wisdom of the past. Throughout Walden there are literary allusions to the Greeks, to Confucius, to hindu literature, to the bible. In fact, one of the chapters in Walden is entitled "Readings" 2. He or she establishes a harmonious relationship with nature, through which he/she is able to discover ethical truths and communicate with the divine. References to rature are found throughout Walden. He observes the pond, bird-life and animals through all seasons. When people think of Walden, they think that this is a book about a fellow who builds a cabin and enjoys the beauties of nature. That true, but when you understand transcendentalism, you know why. It an important stage in life, because through nature you discover truths and develop a divine consciousness. 3. After being nurtured by books and nature, he/she must share his spiritual gains with other men and women. Thoreau shares his spiritual gains by writing and publishing Walden. At the beginning he brags "lustily." Like other transcendentalists, Thoreau was a strong moralist. He constantly tries to alert his readers to their potential for spiritual growth. His celebration of life and his call for men and women to recognize this pathway to spiritual growth is the core unifying theme of Walden. Thus we find that Walden is a carefully designed work of art with a structure designed to support and restate the core idea. He started with notes of his experiences and then worked with them, adding, changing and eventually arriving at a highly compressed, complex, symbolic work of art. Walden - A Look at our Readings Thoreau tells us at the beginning that his book will respond to questions posed about his two year stay at Walden. He hopes to explain the spiritually rich life he enjoyed. While living close to nature, he could see other men wasting their lives chasing wealth and social status. Even farming has lost its noble character. People are leading "lives of quiet desperation." But … he explains, men and women can find a better life. He looked closely at buying the Hollowell place because it afforded more solitude, but he didn't want the mortgage. Instead he settled along the shore of Walden Pond, and there in his cabin he was able to free himself of the economic rat race and to observe and be inspired by nature. He talks about how happy he is. He particularly enjoyed the mornings. In the concluding chapter in our reading, Thoreau's spiritual quest at Walden Pond has come to a close. Based on the truths he has learned, Thoreau tells us that we too must begin a new and finer life. He tells us that you don't have to explore the darkest Africa or the South Seas, that life involves an inward voyage where we can discover our greatness. Man can become whatever he chooses to be "if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams." He also remind us to avoid the trap of conformity. "Why should we . . . a different drummer." With the story of the bug hatching from the wood of a table, Thoreau ends Walden with an note of optimism and hope in humankind's ability to transcend his self-imposed limitations and fulfill one's potential for excellence. [End]