Thoreau's Garden
By Peter Loewer
From the Introduction:
Books have been written about Thoreau's effect on America's psyche, but it's interesting to note that even today his name is used (often in vain) to market nature to a starved populace. Recently, an Arizona resort advertised its extravagent health spa, pool, and resaturant by telling potential visitors that Thoreau would never have settled for a log cabin if he had known about their twenty acres of Spanish-style architecture and world-class facilities!
Walden is what he's remembered for but the journal is, to me, the most precious thing he left.
And then for my afternoon walks I have a garden, larger than any artificial garden that I have read of and far more attractive to me,--mile after mile of embowered walks, such as no nobleman's ground can boast, with animals running free and wild therein as from the first,--varied with land and water prospect, and, above all, so retired that is extremely rare that I meet a single wanderer in its mazes. No gardener is seen therein, not gates nor [sic]. You may wander away to solitary bowers and brooks and hills.
