At the McLane Center of the New Hampshire Audubon Society on Oct. 11, Dr. Robert Fay, English professor at Landmark College, talked about his two-year journey in the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau. Accompanied by color slides, he described how he visited the places where Thoreau traveled and how he tried to see the “theater of nature through the eyes of the naturalist.”
Fay said he focused on the following five major areas where Thoreau sojourned: the Walden Woods, the Monadnock Region, Cape Cod, the White Mountains and the Maine Woods. In each region, Fay visualized Thoreau walking on the trails and taking notes about what he saw. Fay described how the experience gave him a closeness to Thoreau that is difficult to explain. “This excursion of walking in Thoreau’s footsteps changed my life,” Fay said. “I began seeing nature as a theatre of extraordinary drama.”
Fay then quoted Thoreau, “My profession is to be always on the alert to see God in nature, to know his lurking places, to attend all the oratories, the operas of nature.”
When Fay was a sophomore in high school, his teacher gave him a routine reading homework that included portions of Thoreau’s journals. “Immediately,” Fay said, “I was impressed that here was a writer that was not a phony. Since that time in high school Thoreau has become a lifelong friend.”
With his first teaching assignment in Concord, Mass., Fay became more intrigued with the writings of Thoreau and the places about which he wrote. In rapid succession, Fay then gave a list of words describing Thoreau’s manner of seeing, “observe, recognize, imagine, relationships, irony, paradoxes, surprises and mystery.”
When Fay climbed Mount Monadnock, he said he recalled Thoreau’s words, “I came not to look from the mountain but to look at the mountain.”
After noting that Thoreau began living in his Walden Pond cabin on July 4, 1845, Fay said, “I began my adventure of walking in Thoreau’s footsteps on July 4, 2009.” He added, “Thoreau’s stay in his cabin lasted two years, two months and two days, and my journey in Thoreau’s footsteps took me a little over two years.” Then with special emphasis he said, “I’ll never be the same again.”
