Walden Pond

In 1845, Thoreau built a small home for himself on Walden Pond, on property owned by Emerson.
He spent more than two years there.
Seeking a simpler type of life, Thoreau flipped the standard routine of the times.
He experimented with working as little as possible rather than engage in the pattern of six days on with one day off.
Sometimes Thoreau worked as a land surveyor or in the pencil factory.
He felt that this new approach helped him avoid the misery he saw around him.
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation," Thoreau once wrote.
His schedule gave him plenty of time to devote to his philosophical and literary interests.
Thoreau worked on A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849).
The book drew from a boating trip he took with his brother John in 1839.
Thoreau eventually started writing about his Walden Pond experiment as well.