"...plant life is the foundation of all human intellection." p.203 of Laura Dassow Walls' biography of Thoreau.

He planted 7 miles of beans and groundhogs ate an eighth of a mile. So he ate one. He struggled at eating animals and his friendship with Bronson Alcott could have influenced that.

"always I feel that it would have been better if I had not fished." Walden. He defends vegetarianism as a higher law.

I find trying to not hurt others the most beautiful aspect of the spiritual life, living deliberately. 

Thoreau could imagine some of the lives of escaped slaves who lived in the area, he could imagine the Native Americans who lived nearby and were no longer there. There was evidence of dwellings and arrowheads when he ploughed the fields.