Henry David Thoreau was a writer and philosopher, who sought to rid himself of the unnecessary distractions of his environment and to simplify his life. He lived most of his life in Concord, Massachusetts and spent two years, two months, and two days in a small one-room house in the woods by Walden Pond. During his time spent living alone among nature, he recorded his experiences in an extensive, hand-written journal and also in his published work, Walden.
In the second chapter of Walden, "Where I Lived and What I Lived For", Thoreau expresses his desire "to live deliberately" (pg. 271) and to "live deep and suck out all the marrow of life" (pg. 271). He wished to live for everything nature itself had to offer, instead of becoming distracted by trivialities, such as social gossip, materialism, and modern technology. Trains, newspapers, and the post office are some of the things Thoreau was determined to cast aside in his isolation. He felt that these things prevented him from living life to the fullest and feared dying, only to "discover [he] had not lived" (pg. 271).
Once settled into his new home on Walden Pond, Thoreau woke each morning with a refreshing vigor for life and he discovered profound inspiration in the light of the early morning hours. "Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me" (pg. 270), he writes. Thoreau suggests that it is far more beneficial to awaken naturally, syncing your own internal clock to the cycle of your environment, rather than to be harshly awoken by external influences, such as the factory bells he mentions in his text. Instead of waking to the sound of work beckoning him to toil his life away, Thoreau woke to the sun and to the sound of birds whose songs are rarely heard by men, save for the occasional early riser. He writes, "I have never yet met a man who is quite awake" (pg. 270), referring to the majority of society who blindly flounder their way through their lives, only "awake enough for physical labor" (pg.
