This cache was created as a tribute to Henry David Thoreau's
essay Life Without Principle.
Life Without Principle originated as a lecture called
"What Shall it Profit," first delivered at Railroad Hall in
Providence, Rhode Island, on December 6, 1854. Thoreau had begun
work on the essay about three months after the publication of
Walden. He worked on Walden for seven years and was expecting
it to be successful enough to create an unprecedented demand for
his services as a lecturer during the following winter lecture
season.
During the last few months of his life, he was preparing "What
Shall it Profit" for publication. It was finally published more
than a year after his death, in the October 1863 edition of the
Atlantic Monthly, where it received its modern title.
"Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them
in throwing stones over a wall, then in throwing them back, merely
that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily
employed now."
This essay is considered the most important and most
influential of Thoreau's shorter writings. It is a brilliant
summary of Thoreau's most fundamental and passionately held
beliefs, that of defiant individualism and a plea for the
individual's right to march to the sound of his own drum. It is
pure Transcendentalism, a plea that each follow his own inner
light. It can be best summarized in Thoreau's own words
..."Let us consider the way in which we spend our
lives."
"The ways by
which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To
have done anything by which you earned money merely is to
have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the
wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats
himself."
Thoreau believed every man must discover for himself what the
Good Life is, and he can only find it if he consults himself and
his own nature. Thoreau argues that work should be something we
love to do, in order to lead a life worth living. Our lives
should be about enjoying living, not making a living.
"There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the
greatest part of his life getting his living."
"Do not hire a
man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of
it."
The focus of the essay is on Thoreau’s penetrating questions
about how to live ethically and responsibly, as part of nature and
part of society – questions that lead us to confront the way we
live our lives. It has been 150 years and Thoreau still asks 'Why
wait until retirement to do what you love?'. Reading this book
changed my life...
"We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent
and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what
objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention. Read not
the Times. Read the Eternities."
You will
notice a lot of Mountain Laurel trees growing here. It is a
beautiful thicket-forming shrub or small tree. It is evergreen with
reddish-brown shredding bark and produces beautiful large pink
flower clusters. This tree is found in the understory of mixed
forests on upland mountain slopes in the Appalachians, and is one
of the most beautiful native flowering shrubs in North America.
This area is stunning in the spring. Take time to enjoy
them...