"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."
In your days lately, is there more time you deliberately chose, or more time you were simply swept along by?
Two years in a cabin, keeping only what was truly necessary
Thoreau was a Harvard-educated intellectual who felt industrialization and materialism were quietly hollowing out people's lives. To test this conviction directly, he built a cabin by hand on Walden Pond, land owned by his mentor Emerson, and lived there for two years and two months.
During this time, he did only the minimal labor needed to be self-sufficient, spending the rest of his time observing, thinking, and writing. When later asked why he went to the woods, he said it was so that, when he came to die, he would not discover he had never truly lived.