Chapter II: Where I Lived, and What I Lived For

Thoreau describes how he imaginatively bought all the farms in his area, enjoying their landscapes without the burden of actual ownership.

He recounts nearly buying a farm for its retirement and ruinous state, but was released from the deal, retaining the landscape in his mind.

He moved into his unfinished house on Independence Day, finding himself suddenly a neighbor to the birds and the thrilling songsters of the forest.

He describes the pond as a mountain tarn and the view from a nearby hilltop, feeling that the water gave buoyancy to the earth.

He felt his house was in a remote, unprofaned part of the universe, as far off as the constellations, where he could live with high thoughts.

Every morning was an invitation to simplicity, and he argues that to be awake is to be alive, though he has never met a man fully awake.

He went to the woods to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and to discover what it had to teach.

He decries that life is frittered away by detail and urges simplicity, arguing that the nation itself is ruined by luxury and want of aim.

He questions the constant hurry and need for news, suggesting that all news is gossip and it is more important to know what is never old.

He argues that we live meanly because we do not see reality, and that God culminates in the present moment, not in a remote eternity.

Thoreau urges readers to wedge their feet down through delusion to a hard bottom called reality, for time is but a shallow stream.