【by Ella Campopiano】

Last fall, I journeyed through the space of Walden, the class, not the pond, and I began to
discover that this physical and imagined space may itself be my Walden. As I write this down
during my class, I see that this space—the questions posed, the exploratory work required, the
amount of thinking and writing that present themselves through this space—is my Walden.
Understanding Thoreau’s Walden, I have created a few ideas that might help me in defining my
own. Thoreau’s Walden is a place that he can go to, arrive at, and escape from another place to.
And it is also a place he can leave. This class exists for a short moment on Mondays and
Wednesdays, but while the classroom may always exist, I do not have the same freedom to enter
the space as I please as Thoreau might have for the physical cabin. Or do I? Sometimes, when I
enter the space adjacent to the classroom, in the reading of a chapter or the writing of an essay, I
am able to replicate the flow of ideas present while existing in this class.

Which brings me back to the qualifications for one’s Walden. It must be a space—one
you can go to—that allows for the exploration of self, of thought, and of ideas. I have found that
Walden, and other classes that engage my academic focus, are places where I ask questions
about myself, where I can explore and go on idea-creation tangents. I feel similar “ah-ha”
moments as Thoreau describes when he is looking at ants, or loons, during these cerebral
endeavors.

During a literature class last year, we spoke about the idea that women’s diaries during
the American Civil War allowed for self-reflection, showed their own interiority, and that often,
they almost wrote as if for a perceived audience. A reflection on this, and the proposal that I
could view my own writing in this way, acted as the first entry into my own journal. As of right
now, my journal has turned into the most successful writing project I have ever undertaken. I
write in academic language, use the thesaurus to make my language more flowery, avoid
abbreviations, and use Times New Roman, 12-point font. Using these conventions of academic
writing that I hold valuable, I am better able to communicate my own feelings and experiences.
The day that I wrote this first entry, I also wrote a reflection on a weekend I went backpacking,
calling on Thoreau and discussing the way that I went into the woods deliberately. I wrote that
entire entry, during Civil War Literature, at around nine o’clock in the morning. Perhaps
morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. So, when I first postulated that my own
Walden was also the woods, I failed to realize that I did not write that journal entry while in the
woods. I wrote it during a literature class.

My Walden is a place I can go and leave. When I go home for the summer, I feel
separated from my writing. When I am in the realms of academia—either in the physical
classroom during a class, or through my own construction of academia through my 12-point
Times New Roman journal—I have larger, and simultaneously more specific, ideas about myself
and humanity. What are these ideas? Well, for one, I have been quite successful in figuring out
different facets of my identity and my relationships to femininity, growing up, food, happiness,
men, etc., through the avenue of my journal. Yet, whether it be through my journal, through
academic papers where I explore people and ideas, or through essay prompts that ask me to
connect with a man living in the woods in the nineteenth century, I have found my own Walden,
my own ‘place’ to explore my ‘big thoughts.’

Like Thoreau built his cabin and stacked his wood, I helped to construct and manufacture
my own Walden: I worked hard, I got into a small New England liberal arts college, I discovered
that I was lost, and then, I reflected. And I lived as deliberately as one can in our world. And in
this I discovered my Walden. What do I do now? That is the question! I will probably someday
leave this space, stop staying up all night to finish a novel or write a paper, randomly one day
when someone asks me to, or when I decide to, most likely by means of a diploma, or later, a
family. But at length the winter is setting in in good earnest and I am heating my space so that I
may save a little time for the fine arts, when I still have the warmth and ability to create them.