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Book Review
| Walden Pond: A History. By W. Barksdale Maynard. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. × + 404 pp. Illustrations, maps, bibliography, index. $35.00.
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| One of my favorite entries in Thoreau's Journals (X, p. 314) is his account of anadromous fish entering Concord-area brooks in the spring. "The water running down meets the fishes running up. They hear the latest news." So, too, does Johns Hopkins architectural historian Barksdale Maynard, in his fine book Walden Pond: A History, give me, a former Massachusetts natural resources and environmental administrator once responsible for the Walden Pond State Reservation, the latest news. For me, it is a reminder of a past filled with both prospect and contention. Before enlarging on this observation, let me give you a thumbnail sketch of the book and its contents. |
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Attractively designed and laid out, the volume includes 334 pages of highly readable text supplemented by careful notes, anecdotes, interviews, historic photographs, detailed maps, and a sizable bibliography. The account is presented in eleven chapters organized into dated periods. Not all are equal in length. Approximately half of the book is set within Thoreau and Emerson's lifetimes. The remainder covers the post-Emerson period, concluding with what the author calls "Days of Confusion and Turmoil" and a final chapter, "Walden.org," devoted to the curious mix of scholars and activists who are present today. A reader steeped in the spirituality and intellectualism of transcendentalism will find much in the book that is comforting and familiar. But others may find the evidence of pragmatic use and development of the pond area and surroundings over the years to border on irreverence. For Maynard's is an account of an area with a robust identity of its own as a public pleasuring ground extending back even to the days of Thoreau and Emerson. |
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One finds anomalies of all kinds—Thoreau's own interests in productive uses of the forest; the presence of a popular picnic, bathing, and fishing area now serving 700,000 visitors annually; the deliberate placement of a local trailer park and town landfill at the edge of the Reservation; the case of state senator James DeNormandie defending those intrusions while simultaneously advocating the conservation of the area; and the ultimate irony of DeNormandie's son, Philip, becoming the developer who triggered the Walden Woods acquisition project improbably led by rock star Don Henley. And so readers will find in Maynard's book a rich tapestry of events and actors constituting a valuable addition to the traditional Thoreau literature. But for modern environmentalists, it presents an early warning of issues to come. In urban settings, simply preserving an area without consideration of its human dimensions will no longer do. |
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Charles H. W. Foster, a former Massachusetts commissioner of natural resources, secretary of environmental affairs, and dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, is currently an adjunct research fellow at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. |
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