A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers by Henry David Thoreau: book review

This 2014 edition is a collection of four books by American essayist and historian Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862): A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849), Walden (1854), The Maine Woods (1864), and Cape Cod (1865).

Thoreau never married, did not vote, refused to pay taxes, ate no meat, drank no wine, and smoked no tobacco. He spent life on the land in the country, shunning the cities. ‘He was a man of the strongest local attachments, and seldom wandered beyond his native township’ (of Concord). He preferred ‘unartificial’ people and things.

The Maine Woods and Cape Cod were published post-humously from a collection of Thoreau’s writings. The Maine Woods focuses on woods and wilderness, and mountains and meadows, whereas Cape Cod focuses on his short-distance travels. These few journeys are to the plains of Nauset, the beach towards Princetown about 25 miles from his home, where he writes about the Wellfleet Oysterman and the lighthouse (The Highland Light).

However, this dense collection focuses primarily on the other two books: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers; and Walden.

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers is 300 pages about a week-long fishing trip, travelling in a boat with his brother, in August/September 1839. Thoreau writes about the depth and width of the rivers, the landscape, bird life, animals, vegetation, trees, and (especially) the fish. He writes of the people, and ‘greater men than Homer, or Chaucer, or Shakespeare, only they never got time to say so, they never took to the way of writing.’ He writes of poems and poetry – and records the poems he wrote along the way.

Long, long sentences that meander from thought to though reflect the long days and nights along the length of the waterways. He writes of the sights and sounds. ‘I have heard the voice of a hound, just before daylight, while the stars were shining, from over the woods and river, far into the horizon, where it sounded as sweet and melodious as an instrument.’ He writes about long periods of inactivity, just fishing and breathing in all that is around him. He writes of religion and nature. But most of all, he writes about friendships and relationships.

Walden was published 15 years after his two-rivers fishing trip. Thoreau lived in the woods for two years from 1845-47, ‘ a mile from any neighbor’ in a house he built himself on the shore of Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts. He earned a living ‘by the labor of my hands only.’

In this book, Thoreau contemplates the simple life. He writes of the crops he planted on two acres of land, and records the cost of building his home, as well as the cost of food and expenses. He hopes his expenses don’t offend the reader: ‘I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten … and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour.’

After the toil of home-building, he writes of enjoying the view. ‘As I sit at my window this summer afternoon, hawks are circling about my clearing; the tantivity of wild pigeons, flying in twos and threes athwart my view … the sedge is bending under the weight of the reed-birds flitting hither and thither; and for the last half-hour I have heard the rattle of railroad cars … conveying travellers from Boston to the country.’ He adds a poem:

What’s the railroad to me?

I never go to see

Where it ends.

It fills a few hollows,

And makes banks for the swallows,

It sets the sand a-blowing,

And the blackberries a-growing.

The writing is similar to A Week on the Concord, but he adds his thoughts about solitude, visitors, and the turning of the seasons. He also offers advice to his readers about living on the land: ‘Cultive poverty like a garden herb … Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends … Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts …’

Written 150 years ago, it still enthrals. Thoreau’s writing ranges from the scientific to the emotive, to introspection to an awareness of his readers. His writings are descriptive and evocative, and always poetic. His sentences are exhilerating and intoxicating to read. This is writing at its superlative best.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).