Thoreau In and On the Catskills

In Elevating Ourselves, Henry David Thoreau’s journals from his trips up such mountains as Mount Greylock or Saddleback, the Katahdin, Mount Washington and the Catskills are examined and interpreted. When Thoreau lodged in the home of a saw-miller in the Catskills, his profound and interesting writing took place. It was here that he started to refer to things in a more serene and sophisticated manner. While the majority of his writings are peaceful and intelligent, of what we’ve read, I believe this to be a very pivotal point in which his writings came in a much more poet manor than probably intended.
When Thoreau settled to live on the Catskills, he discusses, “the auroral atmosphere” of the mountains around him and how he likens the feeling to Mount Olympus (Huber 25). It is a comparison that takes me by surprise. It is not very often an American writer refers to a place like Greece when describing how it feels in a much more tactless place that is hundreds of miles awa...