Wildness Is the Infrastructure

The loon comes back to Walden in early May, and when it does, the ice is gone and the book is nearly over. Spring is the next-to-last chapter, and Kaag thinks Thoreau ends on it because rebirth is really forgiveness: the fixed and the sorrowful breaking open. Kaag's title borrows a word Thoreau never wrote, though he got to the idea first, that the wildest places are quietly holding civilization up. A middle-school geography worksheet makes a surprise appearance to help Kaag prove it. And the boldest sentence in the chapter, seven words long, moves Easter itself to a pond in Concord.