Emerson, Thoreau. .and Sustainability. .

By Richard W. Franke

This is the latest installment in ourSigns of Sustainability series,organized , by Sustainable.Tompkins. Visit them online atwww.sustainabletompkins.org.

The true ancestors' of sustainabili-ty in America arethe native peopleof the Western Hemisphere. As wesaw in earlier articles, they devel-oped the state-level environmentalpolicies of the Inca, they managedsubclimax forest successions in theEastern Woodlands and used theThree Sisters method of high-out-put low-soil-loss agriculture exem-~plified in the Finger Lakes area 'bythe Haudenosaunee people.

The European conquerors andimmigrants paid little attention tothe land-management skills of

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their victims. It was only in' the1980s that modern science beganseriously investigating the nativeachievements and their relevancefor the wider society. .

The sustainability movement inthe U.S. found its earliest inspira-tions in the '19th-century writingsof two intellectuals of Europeanorigin: .Ralph Waldo Emerson(1803-82)was a founder of tran-scendentalism; a philosophy that.includes the proposition that thesupernatural is revealed -throughnature and that all plants and ani-mals partake in some way of the .supernaturaLEmerson wrote that, "Nature is a

language ... I wish to learn ... that Imay read the great book that iswritten in that tongue." Emerson'sviews were considered heretical bymany traditional Christians of the

time who saw transcendentalism asan attack on the Bible.Emerson's chief protege and col-

league was Henry David Thoreau(1817-62). Thoreau infusedEmerson's intellectual beliefs intohis daily life, arguing that by sim-ple living and direct contact with.nature we can discover the tran-scendental life force otherwiseobscured by materialistic urges.

In 1845,Thoreau moved into thewoods on a piece of property ownedby Emerson. Thoreau lived therefor a little over two years, buildinga 10-foot-by-15-footcabin for about$28.50.He mostly produced his ownfood, heating fuel and other neces- I

sities and kept a detailed journal ofhis experiment, which he pub-lished in 1854 under the title"Walden; or, Life in the Woods."

The approximately 250pages of

"Walden" include detailed descrip-tions of the geology;the plants, ani-mals, visitors and sunsets supple-mented with ruminations aboutcivilization's impact on the naturalworld. He especially loved and stud-ied one of several ponds on theproperty. "Walden" is 'considered.the founding "nature book," now aliterary genre associated especially Ii'

with American writers.Walden Pond eventually became

famous' and is now theCommonwealth of MassachusettsWalden Pond State Reservation atConcord, a few miles outside ofBoston. Emerson and Thoreau areviewed by many as originators of"voluntary simplicity;" a conceptnow much in vogue among sustain-ability activists. They saw simplici- 'ty as a rejection 'of excessive accu-

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