Symbolism In Thoreau's Journey From The Holy Land

The entire essay is an expansion upon the ideas expressed in this opening sentence. Thoreau explores the etymology of the word "saunter," which he believes may come from the French "Sainte-Terre" (Holy Land) or from the French "sans terre" (meaning without land). Either derivation applies to walking as he knows it, but he prefers the former. True walking is not directionless wandering about the countryside, nor is it physical exercise. It is a crusade "to go forth and conquer once again, this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels." Although he admits that his own walks bring him back to home and hearth at the end of the day, the walking to which he aspires demands that the walker leave his life behind in the "spirit of undying adventure,

The walk we should take "is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel in the interior and ideal world"a path difficult to determine because it does not yet "exist distinctly in our idea." Thoreau's own natural tendency is to head west, where the earth is "more unexhausted and richer," toward wildness and freedom. The east leads to the past — the history, art, and literature of the Old World; the west to the forest and to the future, to enterprise and the adventure of the New World. As a nation, we tend toward the west, and the particular (in the form of the individual) reflects the general tendency. Thoreau believes that physical environment inspires man and that the vast, untamed grandeur of the American wilderness is "symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and poetry and religion of America's inhabitants may one day soar." He expands upon the evidence of history in Europe as reflective of the past. America, whose landscape has not yet been completely civilized, suggests "more of the future than of the past or present." The author sees in the promise of wild America "the heroic age

Thoreau writes that "the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports." Man needs "wild and dusky knowledge" more than lettered learning. Thoreau undercuts the notion of "Useful Knowledge," which may preclude higher understanding, preferring instead "Useful Ignorance" or "Beautiful Knowledge." His own desire for knowledge is intermittent, but his "desire to bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant." He encourages not the seeking of knowledge per se but rather of "Sympathy with Intellect." Our understanding cannot encompass the magnitude of nature and the universal. Thoreau writes that in his own relationship with nature he lives "a sort of border life, on the confines of a world into which I make occasional and transient forays only." Even Thoreau–a man who has devoted his life to higher pursuit–cannot grasp the full meaning of nature. When we are successful in beginning to approach the universal through our experience of nature, our glimpses of understanding are fleeting and evanescent. Imperfect though our comprehension is, however, we must elevate, must seek those places that offer broader perspective. Thoreau employs the image of the rooster–crowing confidently to inspire others to alertness and awareness, expressing the "health and soundness of