Why the Woods

Kaag begins with two dates, seventy years apart, in one small town. In April 1775, a war for independence broke out at Concord's North Bridge. On the Fourth of July, 1845, a twenty-seven-year-old from that town moved into a cabin he had built by a pond. Kaag doesn't think the second date an accident, and asks what kind of revolution Thoreau thought was still unfinished. Along the way, wild turns out to have madness buried in its roots. Then, near the end of Economy, Thoreau finally says what the experiment was for, and the answer is modest enough to walk right past: he went to the pond to improve the nick of time. Nick is a small word, and Kaag thinks he chose it carrying a private grief.