7 - Nature and the Origins of American Civilization in Cape Cod

Summary

IN “WALKING” THOREAU CLAIMS, “Eastward I go only by force, but westward I go free” (Exc 195–96). In fact, however, his most frequent destination beyond Concord was eastward on Cape Cod. Thoreau took four walking excursions on Cape Cod: the first in October 1849 with his friend Ellery Channing, the second alone the following June, the third in July 1855 with Channing, and the last alone in June 1857. As he did in Walden, in Cape Cod Thoreau condenses multiple years of experience into one, in this case using his first trip as a narrative structure, and expands the narrative with material from the other trips. The result describes his exploration of a history very different from the one he explored in A Week and “Walking,” a wilderness very different from the Maine woods, and a culture very different from that of Concord. His journey takes him to the origins of succession in American history, to a harsh landscape that shaped the new inhabitants, and to a culture that learned to survive in that landscape. Cape Cod is also a book that contains, more explicitly than any of Thoreau's other books, a vision of human ecology, of the interaction between nature and culture.

Critiquing New England History

That Thoreau made four trips to Cape Cod suggests how serious he was about understanding America's origin story. Cape Cod, unlike the Maine woods, was not a place to experience an unchanged forest landscape and a native culture still containing the language and customs of the past. Instead it offered a barren landscape where Thoreau could compare historical accounts of the ever-changing Cape to its current reality and question conventional historical accounts of the settling of America.

On his first trip Thoreau carried several books: a contemporary guidebook to the Cape, a volume published by the Massachusetts Historical Society containing histories of Cape Cod towns, and two Pilgrim narratives of the Cape (Moldenhauer, Historical Introduction 251). When he returned to Concord, he did extensive further research on Cape Cod and Pilgrim history. Thoreau finds the town histories very useful and consults them as he walks the Cape.