Thoreau’s Experiment in Nature

Where I lived, and What I Lived For, a non-fictional essay by Henry David Thoreau, provides us with a glimpse of Thoreau’s path unto enlightenment. The narrator uses his masterful transcendentalist prose to describe the two years he spent living in the woods, becoming one with nature.
Thoreau wants us “to live deliberately, to front [sic] only the essential facts of life…”(932) before one realizes on his deathbed that he hadn’t really lived. The narrator tells us time is short, to slow down and cherish life, to become one with nature.
As the narrator plans his experiment he considers how he will live off the land. He ponders how he will “layout the land into orchard, woodlot, and pasture…”(930). ...