Thoreau’s Notes on the Journey West: Nature Writing or Environmental History?
Author(s)
Philippon, Daniel J.
Abstract
In this essay, I reconsider the purpose, context, and content of Thoreau’s notes and explore the significant challenges they pose for the contemporary reader. In particular, the incomplete character of the notes creates uncertainty about whether they should be read as nonfiction nature writing or as source texts for environmental history. By situating Thoreau’s notes at the nexus of both of these disciplines–as part of Minnesota’s emerging “literature of place”–the seeming weaknesses of this text can instead be seen as virtues that can help us make connections between the fields of environmental literature, history and ethics. Thoreau’s text enables us to begin to articulate a version of what Mitchell Thomashow has identified as “ecological identity”–a version that belongs not to a single person but to an entire community. In the notes of his Minnesota journey, in other words, Thoreau offers a model for how to cultivate the kind of ecological community identity that Aldo Leopold later identified as central to the establishment of a land ethic.
