Dillard and Thoreau Comparison :: Essays Papers

Dillard and Thoreau Comparison From the lone hiker on the Appalachian Trail to the environmental lobby groups in Washington D.C., nature evokes strong feelings in separately and every one of us. We often struggle with and are ultimately shaped by our relationship with nature. The relationship we forge with nature reflects our fundamental beliefs slightly ourselves and the world near us. The works of timeless authors, including Henry David Thoreau and Annie Dillard, are relate around their relationship to nature.The love for nature is one that is formed when young. Thoreau shows state of early development of a lifelong love for nature that he would carry with him in everything that he did. As a young son of ten he was fond of walking deep into the woods that adjoin his home in Concord in search of solitude (Salt 18). Thoreau verbalised an interest in living at Walden Pond at the maturate of ten (Salt 19). His love of nature can largely be attribute to qualities inherit ed from his mother (Salt 22). It would rightfully be his love of nature that he would be remembered for.Thoreau after graduating from Harvard College began to keep a journal that he fill with the some thoughts and observations that came to him on his daily walks about Concord (Richardson 7). These Journals would spawn into the many books that he wrote, the most prominent being Walden. Thoreau was a self-taught naturalist, who spent untold of his time systematically studying the natural phenomena almost exclusively around Concord (Witherell and Dubrulle). His Journal contains these careful observations, such as the cycles of plants, of local body of water levels, and many other natural phenomena (Witherell and Dubrulle). These Journals help to impress the love that he held for nature. It is this feeling that has propelled him to be considered by many to be the leader of the environmental movement (Buell 171). Thoreau himself cared little for group activities, religious or po litical, and even avoided organise reform movements (Gougeon 195). The abolitionist movement did however bring Thoreau out and into the unrestricted forum (Salt 140). As he became further involved with his Journal and his inquiry of nature he began to develop into an environmentalist and natural historian (Buell 172). This is seeming(a) by his views represented in Walden regarding the progress that was taking place in Concord at the time (Witherell and Dubrulle).