Publications

Where’s Walden III

An anthology of works by the participants in the 2003 Where’s Walden? SummerWrite Day Camp for Children & Youth

Human beings are fascinating creatures, able to run their raw experience through many different filters. Some filter their woodland experience through children’s literature: all mushrooms remind them of fairy homes or else every wood is The Great Dark Forest at the edge of European folktales.

Some see the North-Eastern American woods of the past: Iroquois trails still in use, with the bow hunters carrying back the deer to the village, full of humility toward their animal brothers and gratitude for the gifts of the Great Spirit. Or Thoreau’s retreat into observation and transcendental philosophy, an experiment in solitude and “self-sufficiency,” impossible without the bounty and companionship of nature.

Others with the more scientific bent see objects of constant change and discovery, and, from old-growth to slime molds, are always asking themselves what part of the cycles of nature they are witnessing, and what surprise or mystery might appear next.

And then, there are people who are deaf to the call of the woods. Dampness, mosquitoes and sore feet are all they can think of when someone says “let’s go hiking.” Yet the woods are not without an effect: the sojourners leave with a greater appreciation of roofs, screen doors, and Limoaches.

Most of us are capable of all these viewpoints. I have held them all myself, at various times.

Mostly now I see the woods as, thank God, still there; perhaps not intended as a gift to me, but nonetheless a gift that my soul, my civilization, my species would be hard put to do without.

—Wendy Low, Director of Youth Education and Community Outreach Writers & Books

Acknowledgements

Instructors

• Edgar Brown
• William Chaisson
• D. J. Kitzel
• Wendy Low

Editors

• Daniel T. Cole
• Jenny Kusmierczak
• Wendy Low

< William P. Chaisson • Where’s Walden III • Aaron Pettine >

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