The records of the rambles of the two men are many. In his memorial essay on Thoreau, Emerson wrote:
It was a pleasure and a privilege to walk with him. He knew the country like a fox or a bird, and passed through it as freely by paths of his own. He knew every track in the snow or on the ground, and what creature had taken this path before him.... On the day I speak of he looked for the Menyanthes, detected it across the wide pool, and on examination of its florets, decided it had been in flower five days.
Emerson’s records after walks with Thoreau are full of wood lore. He may have recognized the plants himself, but he seldom recorded them except when he had been with his more expert friend.
In 1839 Thoreau, in company with his brother, spent “A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers,” from which he drew the material published ten years later in a volume with that title. It is a meandering record of the things he saw during the seven days and the thoughts suggested by them. In his lifetime the book was so complete a commercial failure that after some years he took back seven hundred of the thousand copies printed. In the meanwhile, from 1845 to 1847, he indulged in his best-known experience—his “hermitage” at Walden Pond, a little way out from Concord. This gave him the subject matter for his most famous book, “Walden,” published in 1854 and much more successful in point of sales. These two volumes, together with a few prose essays and a modest number of poems, were all that was given to the public during his lifetime. Since his death a large amount of the manuscript he left has been published, as shown in the list at the end of this chapter.
“Walden” is externally an account of the two years and two months of his residence at the lakeside, but it is really, like his sojourn there, a commentary and criticism on life. In the chapter on “Where I lived and What I lived for” he wrote:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then, to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
The actual report of his days by the lakeside can be separated from his decision as to what they were worth. He went out near the end of March, 1845, to a piece of land owned by Emerson on the shore of the pond. He cut his own timber, bought a laborer’s shanty for the boards and nails, during the summer put up a brick chimney, and counting sundry minor expenses secured a tight and dry—and very homely—four walls and ceiling for a total cost of $28.12–1/2. Fuel he was able to cut. Food he largely raised. His clothing bill was slight. So that his account for the first year runs as follows:
| House | $28.12½ |
| Farm, one year | 14.72½ |
| Food, eight months | 8.74 |
| Clothing, etc., eight months | 8.40¾ |
| Oil, etc., eight months | 2.00 |
| $61.99¾ |
To offset these expenses he recorded:
| Farm produce sold | $23.44 |
| Earned by day labor | 13.34 |
| $36.78 |