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Wild Apples and Other Natural History Essays Wild Apples and Other Natural History Essays by Henry D. Thoreau, ed. William Rossi Univ. of Georgia Press, 2002 Walden Pond: A History Walden Pond: A History by W. Barksdale Maynard Oxford Univ. Press, 2004

This year, Walden turns 150, and the sesquicentenary of Henry David Thoreau's chronicle of two years spent living "alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts" has inspired a flurry of commemorations. The Concord Museum is hosting an anniversary lecture series; several new editions of Walden will be published this year, introduced by the likes of John Updike and Bill McKibben; and in the course of the year a host of commentators will be weighing in.

Thoreau's legacy is two-pronged. First, he is remembered as a political prophet, advocating nonviolent resistance to civil government. He cut his political teeth opposing slavery, and in Walden he tells the tale of spending a night in jail after refusing to "pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the state which buys and sells men, women, and children, like chattel." (2004, incidentally, also marks the 150th anniversary of Thoreau's essay "Slavery in Massachusetts.") If his masterful treatise "Civil Disobedience" didn't galvanize the abolitionist movement, it did find ready readers in ensuing generations; it inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and was even occasionally quoted by those who protested the 2003 war in Iraq.

At the same time, Thoreau is heralded as a great nature writer and an environmentalist avant le lettre, a reputation resting not only on Walden but also on his many writings about the natural world. Several of his less-famous nature pieces have been recently collected in Wild Apples and Other Natural History Essays. But "natural history" perhaps does not do these essays justice, for Thoreau goes beyond the painstaking observation and vivid description that is the skeleton of great nature writing. In the title essay, for example, Thoreau not only traces the history of the apple tree, he also wrings lessons about good living from "hardships" the crab apple must endure to "bear a sweet fruit." And the essay sounds an elegiac note as well: "The era of the Wild Apple will soon be past. It is a fruit which will probably become extinct in New England." So, yes, this is natural history, but it is also a reflection on moral formation and an environmental allegory.

Ever since Walden was first published, Thoreau devotees have wanted to see for themselves the land he so eloquently describes. The transformation of Thoreau's isolated parcel into a popular tourist spot is chronicled in W. Barksdale Maynard's engaging Walden Pond: A History. Nowadays, Maynard reports, more than 700,000 people visit Walden Pond every year. Of course, with the tourists comes both environmental degradation and crass commercialism. E. B. White captured this in his description of a 1939 visit to Walden Pond. "I knew I must be nearing the woodland retreat," White wrote, "when the Golden Pheasant lunchroom came into view—Sealtest ice cream, toasted sandwiches, hot frankfurters, waffles, tonics, and lunches. … I followed a footpath and descended to the water's edge. … [On the east shore was a] dressing room for swimmers, a float with diving towers, drinking fountains of porcelain, and rowboats for hire." Today erosion, litter, and simply too many visitors threaten the Walden preserve. Thoreauvians have spearheaded loving conservation efforts, but conservationists are not saints, and the campaigns to save Walden from total destruction at the hands of irresponsible tourism are dogged by infighting and factionalism.

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