Talk about unusual ways to celebrate July 4. On that day in 1845, Henry David Thoreau journeyed into the woods near Concord, Mass. His purpose was not to secure a prime spot from which to view the annual fireworks display at Walden Pond or to mingle with visiting tourists. In fact, there were no fireworks to be seen or tourists to observe. Which is exactly why Thoreau went into the woods and built a small cabin in which to live. He wanted no distractions.
Thoreau famously declared: “I wished to live deliberately.” Deliberately in the sense of living with an intense focus on what life had to offer his five senses. Living so as to “suck the marrow out of life” without the intrusion of worldly events.
Even admirers of Thoreau would be hard pressed to emulate his experiment. For you and me it would involve forgoing the Finger Lakes Times and thus missing out on reading and crafting my scintillating essays. Is sucking the marrow out of life worth that price?
Pondering Thoreau’s adventure gives rise to the observation that so much of what many of us “know” about life comes not from firsthand observation but from what others tell us. The farther we get from home, the truer this becomes. While we may have firsthand knowledge of personal affairs, we have less direct knowledge of community affairs. A few citizens (very few) attend meetings of municipal governing bodies and school boards, but most........