FINDING THOREAU AT WALDEN POND
My affiliation with Thoreau’s transcendentalist philosophy began before I was born. My parents had settled on naming me Emerson—after the transcendentalist philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson—a few months before my birth. However, when they were handed the certificate, my dad got cold feet: “He’ll get beat up by all the other kids with a name like that.” Thus, Emerson was demoted to my middle name. I never did get beat up in school—I guess I have my dad’s hasty decision to thank for that—but Emerson, as well as all the other American transcendentalists, would come to have a profound impact on the
