Walking by Henry David Thoreau

Aleathia says:

My whole life has been built around the adventures in books. When we are young we don't have the ability to travel to far lands, but we have the imagination--wild and verdant--to fly there in our minds. Giving a child the give of reading and a love of books means you give them the opportunity to soak in cultures they don't have access to and understand the world in a different way.

Over the years I have made a game out of reading books...what country do I want to go to? Judging a book by its cover. Reading full collections. Trying to complete all the Pulitzer winners for fiction. These were joyful, adventurous times. I learned a lot. Several years ago when everyone started dying in my family, I lost that imagination. I lost that love of reading. In all seriousness, I was lucky if I could concentrate for more than 10 minutes. My brain was a continual three ring circus I couldn't stop from spinning out of control.

On my side table, I have about 7 books that were started over the last few years and left to sit collecting dust instead of having their words devoured. This year I take my imagination back. I take the books back. I become that explorer I remember being.

The first book finished for 2018 is "Walking" by Henry David Thoreau. I found this book recently at the Library Book Sale and though I had promised myself I wasn't going to indulge on too many books since my attic was full of ones unread, I decided to get this little gem. 60 small pages. What could it hurt?

I have always been interested in Thoreau and Emerson. Both so outspoken for the things of their heart no matter what anyone thought in return.  When you don't live your life like that or have the understanding how, people who do become these unicorns of society. I have always been drawn to a few periods in American History and the 1860-1910 is one that continues to find its way into my heart. The country in Civil War, people standing up for what they believe in, and the great migration West. How I love the look and sound of the Victorian age, but also the rugged, strong faces of pioneers.

Thoreau's "Walking" starts out as a tome about getting outside and seeing the surroundings...about pushing the comfortable boundaries of the time. As this small book ends, it is more about seeking to stay wild at heart, to find adventure, to feel the sun on your face, to look at what nature has given us. This book was written shortly before Thoreau died and knowing this makes the book feel like a deathbed lesson; a pleading to the generations to come to get it right.

"When I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable, and, to the citizen, most dismal swamp. I enter a swamp as a sacred place, --a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow of Nature."

These places we have paved over and put up buildings for people to trade stocks in, to consume home goods and frivolities. I am guilty of using these places. We go there seeking some sort of soul reparation that we don't seem to find when we'd be better walking into the woods, hiking in the desert, swimming in the ocean. That is where we will find the peace we are looking for. How easy it is to forget these things in the bustle of life.

"In short, all good things are wild and free."

Thanks for reading.
Aleathia

Lit Bits-2/25/2015 Sena Jeter Naslund

Aleathia says:

By Job I finished a book today.  It was a long one...almost 500 pages.  This used to not be a huge feat for me, but as I have gotten older my attention span is waning.  It seems harder to sit still long enough to read.  Maybe this is ADD or maybe it is just the culture of instantaneous gratification that has taken over my life.  I hate to think it is the latter, but it is most likely the reason.

I forced myself to sit down and read for almost 2 hours to finish out "All The King's Men".  It was a fantastic book.  I didn't expect to like it so much as it started out based in politics and ended up a book on personal discovery and truth through hard life.  I feel great to have finished it.  With that one done I have now read 29 of the 86 Pulitzer Prize winning novels for fiction.  I will get there some day.

Today I was looking through the stack of books that I had started over the last 2 years but not finished.  I feel bad for these books because they weren't boring by any means.  I was a bad reader and couldn't keep task.  So the next few books will be finishing what I've started.

"Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette" by Sena Jeter Naslund is next on the hit list.  I have always been very interested in the life of Marie Antoinette but was never a good reader of non-fiction.  This is not a biography, but it reads like one with a bit of creative licence.  There has to be some historical significance to it at least culturally.  There would have been much research into the time in which she lived, the customs, the dress, the mannerisms.  Who knows, this might spark me to read a biography of her in the future.  It feels great to be reading again.