Cosmic Organization

John Kaag reads "Higher Laws," "Brute Neighbors" and "House-Warming" in Henry David Thoreau's Walden as a way to avoid becoming Mr. Field of "Baker Farm," stuck in the rut of his neighbors' ideas about luxury. Thoreau refuses to tear wildness and morality asunder: the hunters and farmers around the pond may be best placed to read nature's language, and the hunter may one day put down his rifle and become a poet. Kaag asks whether the wildest man can have a corner on being good.

The loon is the hinge. Thoreau, Kaag says, was a bit of a loon himself, and by now you know him well enough to read it as self-description. Then the year turns cold. Thoreau, who died of tuberculosis at 44, writes about keeping his vital heat, and Kaag hears the plain fact that life is a matter of persisting against a cold that is always creeping in. He leaves you with Thoreau's face in the fire, and asks which face you see.