"The greater part of what my neighbours call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behaviour."
Henry David Thoreau
(Early 1900s postcard of the cairn marking the site of Thoreau's cabin on the shores of Walden Pond courtesy of the Newberry Library and Wikimedia Commons.)
I tried to read this book when I was in high school, at the instigation of teachers who swore I was the living tulku of Henry David Thoreau. The brilliant American Transcendalist kicked my butt; his peripatetic sentences, cluttered with puns on European history, Greek and Latin classics, and Hindu scripture, run for days. Just the 26,000-word introductory digression is an admission ordeal worthy of Zen monasteries. It's also the reason that for years I only read excerpts.
Nor was I alone; even in Thoreau's (better educated, less fatuous) day, modest sales forced him to live off prosaic jobs and the support of wealthy friends. But when I came off the mountain, I was finally motivated to read this seminal work of hermit literature. Turns out it's a work of genius. Who knew?
Walden; or, Life in the Woods is the record of one man's classic eremitical experiment: from 1845 to 1847, Thoreau lived in a primitive hut on eleven acres beside the pond of that name, situated outside Concord, Massachusetts. There he applied the timeless formula, living as close to the ground as possible, in order to minimise distractions from the Truth. (The book, which appeared in 1854, distils his experiences to a single year.)
Ango and advanced age haven't thinned Thoreau's dense paragraphs, but this time the rewards kept me hacking. Thoreau is the Elijah of our time, calling down the profligacy of commercial morality. His meditations on the hypocrisy of industrial culture, its lazy ethics and poverty-mill economics, are either exhilarating or depressing, depending on your perspective: a century and a half have made no dent in their relevance. Take his debunking of the myth that the rich repay in "job creation" what they cost society:
"Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they employed themselves there? You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it."
More masterful is a dissection of capitalist theoretics, in which Thoreau calculates the true cost of train fare to nearby Fitchburg. With accountant-like precision he audits the passenger's entire expenditure, and demonstrates at last that it's not only cheaper, but actually faster, to walk. "We do not ride the railroad," he concludes. "It rides upon us."
Walden positively hums with such wry reflections. Some have become famous:
"If I knew for certain that a man was coming to my house to do me good, I would run for my life."
"In the long run, men hit only what they aim at."
"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation [and go to the grave with the song still in them]."
It also carries a surprising tonnage of jokes:
"Not long since I was present at the auction of a deacon's effects, for his life had not been ineffectual."
"…called a 'man of colour', as if he were discoloured…"
"Is [Sir John] Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so eager to find him?" (A bit of CanCon there.)
We don't normally think of Thoreau as a stand-up comic (Walden also contains one of the few toilet jokes in 19th-century literature), but it would not be farfetched to call him the George Carlin of antebellum America.
And that's just one facet of an enormously rich vein of insight. You also get Thoreau's detailed observation of flora, wildlife, and natural phenomena; his expertise on simple, joyful cuisine; his research in local history; his (occasionally racist; sorry, Ireland) encounters with other cultures; and his engaging reports on the daily-daily of livin' low.
I strongly advise, nay implore, readers to get the 2004 Yale edition of Walden, annotated study-Bible fashion by Jeffrey Cramer. (See photos.) His comprehensive notes, amounting to a second, parallel book, elucidate Thoreau's antiquated terminology, regionalisms, and scholarly allusions that were already obscure the day he wrote them. With Cramer's help, these lines not only cease to be stumbling blocks, they become some of the most enjoyable passages in the work.
Thoreau was neither the first hermit nor the last, but he remains one of the best. His literary power and sheer American modern-ness are gifts for our time. His masterpiece can be hard going for the first few pages, but once you pick up its rhythm, it's hard to put down. Don't forget to use a full sheet of paper for a bookmark, and have a pen handy to write down your favourite quotations.
(I just uploaded a hermitcraft article last week, but a reader recently asked about sourdough starter, so I'll go ahead and answer this week.)
"Sourdough starter" was synonymous with yeast here in western North America before the concentrated item appeared in stores. Elsewhere it was called leavings, scrapings, or spook yeast, or just "yeast", for it was all we had for that in those days. Witness Henry David Thoreau, hermit and Walden author, who had to hike to the village bakery to procure "yeast". There he was sold a living batter, susceptible to being scalded to death in overhot water, that raised bread primarily by chemical reaction with sal (baking) soda.
You tell me what that was.
The paste those Concord bakers doled out is properly called sourdough starter, as "sourdough" by itself usually describes the kneeded dough and its products. But in practice, the starter is also often called "sourdough", and this can confuse beginners. For that reason, I will henceforward identify the yeast culture by the word "starter".
SOURDOUGH STARTER
You will need:
Potatoes
Water
White flour (not whole wheat; see below)
A serviceable pot
Such a pot must be nonreactive (that is, not metal) and watertight. Beyond that, anything will do. The best ones are lidded, wide-mouthed for easy scooping in and out, and clear, so you can monitor the health of the occupants. Mine is a one-quart plastic jar that once held mixed nuts.
Pot secured, proceed as follows:
1. Peel, quarter, and boil the potatoes.
2. Strain, reserving the
water.
3. Eat the potatoes.
4. Stir up a batter with the flour and potato water. It should resemble slightly-too-thick pancake batter.
5. Dump this medium into your pot. Leave the lid off to welcome passing yeast.
Within 24 to 48 hours the starter will begin, slowly at first and then with gusto, to bubble and work. At full élan it will have a healthy, yeasty, fermented smell.
Sourdough starter is a living thing, with wants and needs and specific rights under federal and provincial law. To be precise, it's a community of microbes – hence the term "culture" – that eat various sugars and fart out carbonic gas. (Sorry; you asked.) The sugars come from the ground grains you put back in the pot each time you use some. Keep this up indefinitely and your little sea monkey civilisation will thrive indefinitely, humming happily along on the kitchen counter, where you will bond with it as with houseplants, pets, and children. The longer it survives, the better it will get; new yeasts will happen by and set up shop, resulting in more active, versatile starter.
In any case, the starter must be fed at least once a week, even if that means throwing some starter out to make room. (This fact helps get me up and baking when I otherwise might slough off, because I hate wasting food.) The more you use it, the more you feed it, and the healthier it becomes.
If however your starter goes too long without recycling, the yeast will suffer moral decay and the pot will be invaded by either a red bacterium or a grey mildew. They're both harmless, but they taste bad. To get rid of them, collect a teaspoon of the cleanest starter you can rescue, use it to start a small temporary pot on the side, and throw the rest out. Then sterilise the pot (a thorough washing, followed by an overnight soak in a bleach solution), mix up a fresh batter, and inoculate it with the reserved starter. The yeast will then handily out-compete any intruders that come back aboard with it.
It's also good to feed other grains from time to time, to encourage a diversity of yeasts. You can stir in whole wheat flour now and then, but not too often, because it's full of oils that go rancid over time. Other effective treatments include corn flour (fine-ground cornmeal), masa or powdered oatmeal (not too much of either), and mashed rice or rice flour.
So this oughta get you started. (Get it?) If you're looking for a good first project, you might try hermit bread. It's an easy enough recipe to build confidence, and a hard enough one to teach you a few things. And it's where I started, too.
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