Thoreau Institute At Walden Opens

John F. Harris of the Washington Post, June 6, 1998

LINCOLN, Mass. - The famous quietude of Walden Woods did not quite live up to its reputation today. If Henry David Thoreau had somehow returned to his retreat by the pond, his ruminations would have been interrupted by singer Tony Bennett, who crooned an a cappella version of "America, the Beautiful."

The great transcendentalist thinker would have found other distractions: President Clinton speaking on the virtue of solitude. Rock star Don Henley discussing the interconnectedness of knowledge and denouncing "compartmentalized learning." Not to mention several hundred people, a generous smattering of celebrities among them, feasting under tents on broiled salmon and grilled chicken with portabello mushrooms.

It was part commemoration, part party. The occasion was to mark the opening of the Thoreau Institute, dedicated to housing research materials on the 19th-century philosopher and promoting public appreciation of Thoreau ethics like conservation and civil disobedience.

But the event also was to celebrate a triumph against an intrusion that the institute's founders say would have been an obscene assault on Thoreau's memory. Several years ago, a developer planned to turn much of Walden Woods into a condo project.

Henley, the Eagles drummer who crafted such hits as "Life in the Fast Lane" and who has been a Thoreau devotee since college, raised millions of dollars for the Walden Woods Project to buy the property. Having stopped the development, the project and the Thoreau Society turned their efforts to forming the institute, which is housed in a large Tudor mansion several hundred yards from--but out of sight of--the famous pond.

Before the program began, Henley went for a brief stroll in the woods with the president and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

When they emerged, they took the stage under a brilliant sunny sky, and were joined by Massachusetts's two senators, Democrats Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry. In the audience were actor Ed Begley Jr., who drove here from California in a natural-gas- powered car, singer Jimmy Buffett and former Eagles Glenn Frey and Joe Walsh, Thoreau fans all.

But people had trouble deciding on the proper spirit of the occasion. Kennedy was full of jolly puns about how Henley was truly the "different drummer" that Thoreau celebrated and how he had become "the big fish in Walden Pond." Kerry was more somber, recalling how Thoreau's essays on civil disobedience inspired him when he was protesting the Vietnam War and spent a night in jail.

Hillary Clinton, wearing a floppy hat to shield herself from the sun, noted how the preservation effort at Walden Woods fits her theme on restoring the nation's historical landmarks, part of a commemoration of the year 2000. The president was alternately chatty and contemplative. He noted how in order to celebrate solitude, he had to pose for photographers who wanted to capture him walking in the woods. "It's very frustrating now because when we had real lives, we used to walk in the woods a lot," he joked.

But, turning serious, the legendarily garrulous politician talked -- a bit discursively--about the value of being quiet and alone. "We must not forget the value of self-reliance," Clinton said, referring to a Thoreau essay. "Nor must we forget the fact that Thoreau came here and wrote about solitude, that he learned more about his fellow human beings and the proper relations among people from his solitude because if he had too much contact with other people, he thought you came to take too much for granted and frittered
too much away."

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