A Thoreau-ly Beautiful Pond

American author Henry David Thoreau was born on this day in 1817.

In 1845, Thoreau moved to a small cabin by Walden Pond in his native Concord, Massachusetts. Aiming to escape the shackles of worldly goods, Thoreau chronicled his attempts to live life simply, self-reflectively, and close to nature. The resulting journal became a master work of American literature, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Where I Lived, and What I Lived for, first published in 1854.

This painting by Abbott Thayer reflects the natural splendor that Thoreau found in Walden Pond.

"In such a day, in September or October, Walden is a perfect forest mirror, set round with stones as precious to my eye as if fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh;—a mirror in which all impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by the sun's hazy brush—this the light dust-cloth—which retains no breath that is breathed on it, but sends its own to float as clouds high above its surface, and be reflected in its bosom still."

Source: Henry David Thoreau. Walden; or, Life in the Woods, Where I Lived, and What I Lived for (New York: Dover Publications, 1995).

Pictured: Abbott Handerson Thayer, 1849–1921, Dublin Pond, New Hampshire, 1894, oil, 20 1/8 x 16 1/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of William T. Evans.