April 17, 2026
Thanks to Natalie Sum Yue Chung, HMU 2026 Fellow in Ideas; PhD Candidate in Climate Policy, Princeton University
Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854) by Henry David Thoreau: review by Natalie Sum Yue Chung
There are books we read, and then there are books that read us—that somehow knew us before we knew ourselves. Henry David Thoreau’s “Walden; or, Life in the Woods” (1854) has been such a companion throughout my life. I first encountered Thoreau’s experiment in deliberate living during my undergraduate studies, being introduced by my instructor for the Socratic class “In Dialogue with Nature.” Thoreau’s words have since shaped my understanding of what it means to be a crew member of the Spaceship Earth. But it was only recently, through an unexpected encounter with a Chinese book, that I came to perceive Walden not just as a place (a noun), but also as a practice (a verb).
The Serendipitous Re-encounter with Walden
In early 2025, a few months before I would finally stand on the shores of Walden Pond, I stumbled upon a book that rekindled my curiosity for Walden: 《世界作為參考答案》 (English translation: The World as a Reference Answer), by Chinese scholars Liu Qing and Yan Fei. The subtitle was a philosophical provocation: “世界只提供參考答案，你我才是選擇的主體” (English translation: The world only provides reference answers; you and I are the subjects who make the choices). It was an immersive and self-reflective experience as I read about the philosophical dialogue that Liu and Yan had while walking along the shore of Walden Pond, as visiting scholars at Harvard. Two Chinese sociologists, trained in the traditions of Western academia, finding their way to Thoreau’s pond, in search for the deep reflection on what it means to live meaningfully in our fragmented and accelerated age.
Yan’s interpretation of Walden resonated with me profoundly. For him, Walden Pond symbolizes a return to the inner mental landscape of simplicity and clarity. “Walden” represents simple living, harmony with nature, resisting modern anxiety, and achieving inner solitude through exploration. Thoreau was essentially stripping away unnecessary complexities in life to achieve spiritual freedom and mental tranquility, where he went beyond appreciating nature to perceiving the essence of life through observing the seasons’ transformations. Stillness has been sought in solitude, in the pursuit of intellectual richness over material wealth. The description of the spiritual journey of finding one’s own inner Walden led me into grasping the idea that Walden was never merely a place. It is a way of being, and an active state of tranquil presence in the world. As Yan theorized, “Walden is not a noun. It is a verb.”
The Pilgrimage
I arrived at Walden Pond in the midst of a quiet crisis of spirit. My doctoral journey had brought me from Hong Kong to Princeton, New Jersey, a small town that felt almost like an isolation. I had left behind family, friends, and the vibrant energy of a city that never sleeps. Princeton, by contrast, seemed to embody the very boredom I was trying to escape. I complained about the quiet streets, the early closing hours, the distance from everything familiar. The academic environment was deeply enriching, yet the solitude and lack of community was almost unbearable for me.
It was the friend beside me who spoke the words that stopped me mid-complaint, “What if you treated Princeton as your Walden?”
The World as a Reference Answer has given me a new perspective to see “Walden”, sparking my desire to go on my own pilgrimage, to sit with Thoreau’s words in the place where they were written. In June 2025, I stood at the edge of Walden Pond. The Massachusetts sun filtered through pines as I treaded to the replica of Thoreau’s cabin, a modest ten-by-fifteen-foot structure that held one of the most transformative experiments in American letters. My Boston friends had warned me not to expect too much: there are far more beautiful ponds in New England, they said. And they were right, in a way. Walden Pond is lovely, but hardly extraordinary. Yet as I stood there, watching light dance upon the pond’s surface, creating gradients of emerald and azure, I was profoundly moved by the beauty and tranquility of Walden. It was probably not driven by the aesthetics, but the emotional fulfillment of witnessing the highest form of intellectual beauty as Plato described.
The question landed like a stone in still water. What if the small town I had been lamenting was not a limitation but an invitation? What if the solitude I had been resenting was not loneliness but space to live deliberately, to strip life down to its essentials?
Standing at Walden Pond, I finally understood what my friend had been asking me to see. Thoreau went to Walden not to escape reality but to encounter it more fully. His two years, two months, and two days by the pond were a deeper immersion into the world rather than a simple retreat. And to “Walden” (as a verb), is perhaps to cultivate that same quality of attention wherever one happened to be.
Budding Environmentalism
That moment reminded me of a passage in the original Walden that has shaped my understanding of environmentalism, and of life itself. “Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of King Tchingthang to this effect: ‘Renew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again.’ …There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour.”
This level of devotion to nature, as a “religious exercise” was new to me, different from the traditional nature writing as we often conceive it. To bathe in the pond at dawn was to accept nature’s invitation to simplicity, to align oneself with the “everlasting vigor and fertility” that morning brings. This is environmentalism as practice, cultivating a way of being in relationship with the more-than-human world.
Reading Walden alongside Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “Braiding Sweetgrass” has deepened my understanding of what this relationship might mean. Kimmerer writes of the “grammar of animacy” that Indigenous languages use to speak of the natural world. This grammar recognizes rocks, trees, and ponds as subjects instead of objects, and as relatives instead of resources. Thoreau, in his own way, was reaching toward something similar. Walden Pond was not a body of water to be studied or exploited but a presence to be known, a teacher to be learned from. This is the form of environmentalism that I have been seeking, environmentalism characterized by reciprocity and daily renewal, moving beyond policy papers and conference halls.
The Return
My pilgrimage to Walden Pond was, in some ways, an act of homecoming. I had carried Thoreau’s words with me for so long that standing on the shore felt like meeting an old friend face to face for the first time. I walked into the replica of his cabin and tried to imagine his life there, with deliberate simplicity, accompanied by the daily rhythms of observation and writing.
And I thought about my own small room in Princeton, my own version of that experiment. Could I learn to see my dormitory as Thoreau saw his? Could I treat each morning as an opportunity for renewal?
The answer, I am beginning to understand, is not in the grand gestures but in the daily choice. To rise early and walk the campus paths. To notice the way light falls through the trees. To listen for the “faint hum” that might, with attention, become an Iliad. To reframe boredom or emptiness as space and possibility.
To “Walden” is to practice this attention and to treat each encounter with the nature as an invitation to be present. It is to recognize that the pond is not merely out there, in Concord, but also here with us, as we cultivate the quality of awareness we bring to any place, at any time.
Photo credits: Natalie Sum Yue Chung
