Published on 15 January 2026 under the Reading category.

I wanted to start this blog post with a quote. I started flicking through Walden, which I have just finished reading, for one that would be appropriate. But then I realised any choice would be arbitrary, for the wisdom is so deep within the book that any choice would leave me feeling wanting. With every page I turned, there was something new to make me think. Indeed, if the book Walden was itself a pond, it would both reflect the world back and, in so doing, make me see the world in a new light.

I wondered to myself “why would Thoreau write Walden?” While it may have been explained in the book at some point that I cannot presently recall, the spirit that came to mind is that the scenery was so beautiful that he had to write it down.

As I read Walden, I continually looked out the window. The book may have been written more than one-hundred and fifty-years ago, but the joys about which he wrote – of grasses, the many species of trees, the streams and rivers, the sunrise and the sunset – are still here, right now. Walden helped me see what’s here with new lenses, and to think of my own experiences of and with Nature.

While it is easy to focus on the aspects of independence within the story – Thoreau builds a house in the woods in which to live – I find myself reflecting on how Thoreau was building with Nature; with materials from all around, and a community in the village. I think we’re all building with Nature in our own ways, too. I am when I look outside my window and see the green grasses and think about how I, like Thoreau, might write them down, such that Scotland exists not only where I am right now but also, right now, as you read this sentence, in your hands, just a little bit, for these words were written here. Oh! how connected we are.

One of the things that has stuck with me since reading as much of Walden as I did in my teens was Thoreau’s choice to capitalise Nature in reference to the natural world. I regularly do this, too. Nature is so wonderful.

I first read Walden when I was in my mid-teens. I read the book on the web, via Project Gutenberg. I was delighted that the book was on the web. It’s here! I can read it. And so I did, or at least partly. I stopped about half-way through I think, in part because the text was relatively small and had long line lengths and so, as I can now say, my eyes were tired, and also because of the nature of the language at the time relative to other things I had read.

With that said, I loved what I read, and I knew I had to come back. I’m so glad I did. Some stories are woven over several years, even with a break in the middle. Many stories, too, I am learning, become clearer and more beautiful with age.

Now, I encourage you to look at the world around you, in whatever way Nature is around where you are. Look up to the trees. You might see a bird! Look to the pond. You may see the sky. Look to the leaf. You may see that the world is infinitely complex, but, at the same time, infinitely beautiful.