photo by Collyn Ware

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 did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. 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… ― Henry David Thoreau

Recently, I was talking with a friend, a realtor who specializes in farm land and acreages. When I asked if he’d been busy (thinking he probably hadn’t been since it’s the dead of winter in Iowa), he answered with a resounding yes. Really, I said. At this time of year? He reported that people were buying up land all over southeast Iowa. Even people from out of state, from the coasts, he said. We both speculated on this phenomenon and decided that our Covid year had prompted some to seriously rethink where and how they lived. You’re not going to bump into any stars on any boulevard around here, but you might bump into a white-tail doe and her twins. Literally, if you don’t drive defensively!

I’ve thought about this conversation a lot in the past week. I have a smorgasbord of delights outside my windows: song birds of all sorts and sizes, deer who visit nightly, unblemished snow that blankets the back yard until it winds its way into the timber, sunrises and sunsets to make you weep. For the twenty years I’ve lived on this acreage, I’ve had all these sights and sounds to enjoy, and yet, I’d be lying if I said that I’ve always enjoyed them as I have this past year. I’d be fibbing if I said that I lived deeply and sucked all the marrow out of life, that I lived deliberately, fronting only the essential facts of life. Of course, I haven’t. For too long, I’ve been too busy living–or so I thought–to live.

If Thoreau were my mentor, not my literary but my life mentor, I have no doubts that he’d call me into his office. Do you want to know how many times you looked outside today, how many times you looked up from your book or computer screen? I can count them on one hand. Actually, I can count them on one finger. You’re on probation–indefinitely–until you can improve your life. And this would be fair and kind enough. Averaging my pathetic performance over the past two decades, I would’ve scored low enough to be legitimately expelled. I may have had a smorgasbord of delights all around me, but often I took them for granted just as I took too many other things for granted. Holding a red marking pen and balancing a stack of student papers on my lap, I resigned myself to a life-on-hold.

With far fewer distractions, many of us have come to live more deliberately, driving our lives into corners and reducing them to much lower terms. I can still recall the bliss (and this word doesn’t do it justice) of floating in my above ground pool, orioles, finches, and grosbeaks flying in and out of the oak trees, a cloudless, cobalt sky above me, and sun enough to warm my bones. I remember thinking how blessed I was to have all of this just outside my door. I remember thinking how life didn’t get much better than this.

Throughout history, there have been writers and leaders who celebrated living dearly. They admonished us, cajoled us, shamed and loved us into cultivating better lives. This is nothing new. It may be sadly new for many of us, though, for we’ve lived our lives in the land of conveniences, on the treadmills of production and on the ladders of success. Having learned them in school, we’ve been educated enough to recite Thoreau’s aphorisms. We’ve put them on posters that hung in our classrooms and offices. We’ve used them to introduce speeches and essays. They’ve been our friends:

• I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately . . .
• I learned this, at least, by my experiement: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
• If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away.

But calling them our friends is clearly not enough. I just finished Charlotte McConaghey’s new novel, Migrations. Her protagonist, Franny Stone, is on a mission to find the world’s last flock of arctic terns on their migration from pole to pole. Some reviewers have called this novel an ode to a threatened world, for readers begin to realize that it’s not only the arctic terns that are endangered. The great schools of fish are gone, leaving the ocean barren. There is no bird song, the birds native to different parts of the world now extinct. Franny drives her life into a precious corner and reduces it to a solitary goal: seek and love the arctic terns. She wants nothing more than to come to the end of her life knowing that she lived deliberately, and thus lived well.

We all have those corners into which we might drive what is most precious to us. And once there, we might come to see that, in doing so, we’ve reduced the clutter of our lives to the lowest and most valuable terms. We don’t need a pandemic to live more deliberately, but for many of us, months of living quite differently than we’ve ever lived before have jump-started this. I don’t want to be out-deliberated by some Californian who jubilantly buys ten acres of Iowa hardwoods, birds, and solitude. I want to see the wealth of my rural world. And not because someone else values it, but because I want to come to the end of my life and say I have lived, that I tasted deeply and sucked all the marrow from my 3.6 acres, my decades of living and loving.

I want my mentor, Henry David Thoreau, to pronounce my probation period over. And I want to hear his parting words: Live deeply, dearly, deliberately, my friend.