Thoreau and Muir, and his end

Thoreau was in Madison Wisconsin June 23rd 1861, traveling back from Minnesota to Concord Massachusetts. John Muir was 23 and just got out for the semester and was walking back to Portage. He had just finished his first semester of college. His parents had him working on the farm up till then. I read a biography of Muir and when I think about Thoreau, I think about Muir, who was a great naturalist too. The idea that while they didn't meet, they were close to each other perhaps, maybe in the same city, maybe not too far apart. 

The end of life is of course sad. I feel like Thoreau was coming into his own and dying at the age of 44 was too young. What could he have done with another 20 years, even at a diminished capacity. Unfortunately his traveling companion Horace Mann, the famous one's son, would die at age 26. Maybe I'm getting older, but when you read biographies, they seem to be quite punctuated by death. I know my grandparents deaths were quite shocking to me, uncles and friends now. I remember in my 20s reading the obituary pages of the Times and not knowing the people who died.

This year we lost a lot of celebrities. This year we lost Tommy Smothers, a Dixie Chick, the original drummer for AC/DC, Norman Lear, Shane MacGowan, the saxophonist for the Psychedelic Furs, Matthew Perry, Suzanne Somers, Louise Gluck, Jimmy Buffett, Bob Barker, the school teacher on Little House on the Prairie, the guy who wrote the ballad "Hey Paula", Robbie Robertson, The keyboardist for the Kinks, Paul Reubens, Sinéad O'Connor, Tony Bennett. the rhythm guitarist for Journey, Robert De Niro's grandson, Alan Arkin, the woman in Slackers who claimed to have a pubic hair from Madonna, Glenda Jackson, Cormac McCarthy, Pat Robertson, Tina Turner, Martin Amis, the bassist for the Smiths, Jim Brown, Jerry Springer, Harry Belafonte, Bob Newhart's wife, Tevye actor, Shirley from Laverne and Shirley, David Crosby, Gina Lollobrigida, Lisa Marie Presley, Raquel Welch, Astrud Gilberto, and last but not least Wayne Shorter, and many more faces and names I recognized (source). Tim Wakefield, a pitcher who helped break the Sox's curse, was my age. A lot of people were on TV shows I never watched, or otherwise never heard of them. I'm sure I missed someone too. NY Times collection.

Thoreau died on May 6, 1862. This photo was taken August 21 1861. It was his last trip "away from home" to take the photo, but he would ride in a carriage to Walden Pond in September. His last comment in his journal was that he could tell the direction of the storm by how it cleared the mud off pebbles. 

He was chipper on his deathbed, I think another sign of his greatness. He refused opiates, and Channing was with him a lot at the end. His last words might have been, "Now comes good sailing."

I had insomnia and finished the book at 4:55am on January 8th 2024. 

Emerson's eulogy of Thoreau.