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Guye Blood
Dr. Hepworth
English 101-09
17 November 2008
The Wilderness v. Walking
In 1851 Henry David Thoreau delivered a lecture entitled "Walking" that was later
published, after his death, in the Adantic Monthly in 1862. In 1960 Wallace Stegner wrote a
letter to David E. Pesonen of the Wildland Research Center entitled "The Wilderness;" that letter
was later published in his book. Both Thoreau and Stegner are passionate authors of different
times and different eras, but each has an adoring kinship for the wilderness and advocates for its
preservation.
One has to wonder if Stegner and Thoreau come from the same cloth. Each has an
appreciation for the value and sanctity of the wilderness. Both show a respect for its boundaries,
unlike the common man surrounded by the wild at civilization's edge -- hurrying about his daily
tasks of destroying one to build another and who never stops long enough to ponder its
destruction. Thoreau writes of his distress concerning the destruction of the wild: from
surveying property owners ascribed in their deeds, to home builders destroying the forests that
surrounded town, choking off and polluting his access to his freedom and absolute need to walk
unobstructed in any direction. Stegner, one-hundred years later, lives in a society already
encroached upon by Thoreau' s distresses. He too argues for the preservation of the last of the
Wilderness - if for no other reason than just to know the Wilderness exists for the renewal of his
sanity, health, and spirituality (Thoreau).
The similarities go on and on, but the differences in their styles are evident as well.
Thoreau lives in more rugged times and is hardened by the wild, as he alludes to in his published
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lecture: man and farm animal can be tamed to civilization, but in each are still wild oats to be
sown. Thoreau's "Walking" presents us with the theme that he prefers returning to the wild with
a walk to sitting in civilizations soft cushion. Stegner, living in mid-twentieth century society,
makes the point that society will lose its freedoms and its retreat from its very own pollutants if
we continuously encroach upon, and destroy, the wilderness. He equates the death of the
wilderness with a death in us: "as the remnants of the unspoiled and natural world are
progressively eroded, every such loss, is a little death in me. In us" (Stegner 4).
Each author is different in their styles, times and eras, yet both champion for the
preservation of not only a geographical place, but a realm of self-renewal. Further, they seek a
place where we can return to the wild- peace in each of us, a status symbol of our freedoms and
what it means to be an American -- a place that can only be described as the Wilderness.
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Works Cited
Stegner, Wallace. "Wilderness Letter." The Wilderness Society . 3 Dec. 1960. Accessed 17 Sept.
2008. <http://www.wildemess.org/ourissues/wildemess/wildemessletter.cfm>.
Thoreau, Henry D. "Walking." Transcendentalists . 1862. Accessed 29 Sept. 2008.
<http://www.transcendentalists.com/walking.htm>.
