Henry David Thoreau got famous because he journeyed 25 miles from Boston to Concord, and lived in a cabin near Waldon Pond, as a Woodsman. He wrote a book about living alone, which was his inclination. They put him on a postage stamp 120 years later. Establishment players of the early 1970s called it, the hippie stamp.

Before Thoreau and contemporaries of Henry David were true explorers and adventurers, telling about treks into the West, in hundreds of published volumes sold to Americans. The genesis of Waldon Pond, 1854, was not contemplation of nature and transcendental rumination. It was Thoreau writing whilst sitting on his butt in the environs of Boston reading poorly, wishing that he had the energy and motivation to get away and experience adventure and the unknown.  He wasn’t a strong reader; he lacked much imagination. But being at the forefront of modern writing, he would derive, crib and adopt passages – what should be put into a book of nature along with pouting about his sorry miserableness: I chopped a tree; I saw a bird; there was a footprint [also something also noticed by Robinson Crusoe]; a raccoon came abegging [in the West raccoons steal by stealth, if they can.] This was all 25 miles from Boston, next to one of the towns where the American Revolution seventy years before began in April 1775.

Thereupon, plus connections, Thoreau became known and his book, ever since, has beleaguered high school and some college students in the United States of America, The story and the author’s life are lies. A better book is What I Saw In California, Edwin Bryant, published in 1848, based upon the author’s on-edge 1846 travels by wagon and mules to California and around that territory. He returned east in 1847. His description of the Donner Party and the recovery efforts are disgusting and disturbing, more so than any horror film made today. He met all the significant people in the territory. Bryant Street in San Francisco is named after him.

So read the real thing, or read a book by a mentally ill crackpot wondering whether he should leave his pond-side pad and pondering whether he’ll have to evacuate because wildfires will burn the shack or whether there will be 50 feet of snow next winter and he’ll have to dig out for three weeks.