Andrea Hollander

I was thirteen, English class, Thoreau’s Walden. Well, an excerpt deemed appropriate for 8th graders:

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

My early years were spent in the military, my dad an American Army officer. We settled afterwards in Rahway, New Jersey, where I entered 4th grade. And suddenly the world was larger and scarier. No tall, barbed wire fences, no MPs at the gates to keep us safe. But there were books. And there was a little park I used to walk home through after elementary school. In this park were katydids and cattails, a tiny stream where tadpoles and small frogs sang, there were a few huge cottonwood trees and small green ferns that looked almost edible. It was a small park, a sliver of pie. Yet I felt happy there and safe. I’ve written about it in several poems. 

Later, after I grew to feel safer out in the nonmilitary world of my small town, there were books. More and more of them. And friends. And then there was Walden. 

Years later, I read the whole book. And decided, yes, still yes, I wanted my own Thoreauvian experiment. I wanted it so much I went to graduate school so I could earn a degree that might land me a college teaching position in a small college town near which I might find a parcel of land—wooded—and far enough away from city or suburbs or small town. 

In 1976 I met the man who would become my husband, a man who, since age eleven, wanted to build his own house. And so, my coursework for a Ph.D. finished, we ventured forth to the Ozarks of Arkansas, where we did it all: found 80 acres of undeveloped forest, built our own house, made an adequate garden, raised a child. I cut a narrow, winding path through the woods near our house, walked its half-mile length daily, several rounds, and accomplished what I set out to do, all of which I describe in my poem in this issue of Plant-Human Quarterly. And I lived in those woods much longer than Thoreau. Thirty-five years. Thirty-five thriving years, thanks to the unanticipated treasures hidden there. Nameless. Natural. With much to teach me.