Cape Cod Paperback – November 1, 2013 by Henry David Thoreau (Empire Books)

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) is probably best known for “Walden” and “Civil Disobedience.” Neither has the readability of “Cape Cod,” one of the accounts he wrote of his extensive travels. He was a great travel writer, eager to describe the places he visited, using a more relaxed tone with lighter philosophical inclination than that used in his controversial essays.

As an essayist he was relentless as an advocate for the discovering of life’s true necessities. He was a lifelong abolitionist and champion of civil disobedience. Some described him as an anarchist, although he seemed to favor the improvement of government rather than the destruction of it. While either sitting in prison or residing in solitude on Walden Pond, his writings were heavy with transcendental idealistic musings on “the meanness of the world.” Not so much with his travel tales that seemed to lighten his countenance.

Always known for his pointed satire and cunning wit, Thoreau seemed to bring them forward more easily as he rambled around. A Thoreau biographer, Walter Harding, called “Cape Cod” his “sunniest and happiest book. It bubbles over with jokes, puns, tall tales, and genial good humor.” That might be stretching it a bit, but there’s no doubt that the book is pleasant to read, if a bit wordy. After Thoreau left Walden Pond in 1847 he became increasingly interested in natural history and the environment, and began writing more about them in his travels and expeditions. His love of flora and fauna sometimes dominated his writing providing the reader with great skimming opportunities to survive the redundancy.

The walks he recorded in “Cape Cod,” were compilations of four treks he took, covering most of Cape Cod’s towns. His observations are full of descriptions of the countryside from the seashore to the marshes, plains, scrubby trees, and fields of the Cape’s inner reaches. His encounters with a shipwreck in which many people were killed, an educational encounter with an oysterman, and a riveting description of a lighthouse are informative and highly readable.

I noticed an oddity about his writing. Enthusiastic travel writers are heavy into the food they encounter as they wander. Thoreau tended to ignore the subject. Although he was not a strict vegetarian, meat was low in his priorities because of his perception that it was unclean, and he seemed to subsist on little but air as he trekked around. At one point he mentioned that a clam and a couple of crackers would make a fine dinner,

His writing received widespread praise in later years but also received some pointed criticism from some of his well-known contemporaries. Luminaries such as Robert Lewis Stevenson, John Greenleaf Whittier, and Nathaniel Hawthorne all took their shots at him, calling him unmanly, a skulker, and a “woodchuck.” Thoreau answered by invoking the idea that every man needs to consider the scope of his own life and not worry about what he has heard of others.

There was a good deal of satisfaction for me in the reading of “Cape Cod.” Thoreau’s ideas are thought provoking, his vistas are well formed, and he is, after all, considered a literary icon. I feel much more intelligent and well read after completing “Cape Cod.”