In the spring of 1844, the sound of alarm bells pierced through the smoky air above Concord, Massachusetts; a wall of fire was moving toward the town. As the townspeople frantically beat back the conflagration with shovels and hoes and pine boughs, the rumors of who started the fire swirled as violently as the sparks in the wind. Some blamed the tutor, and some the drifter. Some accused the handyman, and others the pencil maker– and all were correct.

When the pensive and rudderless Henry David Thoreau sparked the blaze, the townspeople responded with haste, but when Thoreau was remorseless over destroying over 300 acres of beloved town forest, the people responded with rage– and the scalding whispers in the streets of the town finally drove Henry David Thoreau to go to the woods “…to live deliberately, and to front only the essential facts of life…”

Thoreau’s writings from within that rustic cottage continue to resonate through the generations that have followed. His celebration of nature inspired conservationists like John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt, and his musings on peaceful protest influenced visionaries across the world like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi– but in this examination of his artful poetry, we get a glimpse into the humor, the heartache, and the humanity of the complicated man who noted, “not till we are completely lost…do we begin to find ourselves”.