My goal here is to speak on and of the World Wide Web as I imagine Thoreau might have, if such a miracle of civilization had been available to him.  In this endeavor, I must hasten to confess that my goal far outstrips my ability and I should be a fool to think otherwise. Never the less, it is Thoreau’s own words, that inspire me to reflect upon the enormity of the task, a thorough examination of  Thoreau, telecommuter.

I shall, embark upon this journey with head held high, for did not Henry D., himself, say that "In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high."  I ask, with all humility, dear readers, what higher target should I aspire to than to his philosophy which, upon it's surface, rejects all but the most simple of enterprise and judges most harshly the kind of civilization in which I find myself.  The community which has created such miracles as the Internet since he left it in favor of a stand of wood not 50 miles to the east of where I now write.

First, let me say that I am much older than Thoreau was when he took his trade to the woods, and I am already well owned by my home, my children and my googads.  In the absence of a crisis such as was seen most recently in the south, although I am saddened to report this is but a recent example, I am loathed to start anew.  I am referring, of course,

about the hurricanes of 2005, that ravaged the southern coast of Florida and Louisiana, but they are merely  among current examples, which include wars, floods, fires and ice which all too routinely cause those who do not perish under them, to find themselves evicted in their wake.  In the aftermath of these events pastors feverishly draft an ecumenical cornucopia of sermons advising their collective flock to prepare themselves should such a fate befall them.  Indeed, Walden is, for me, a source of comfort, whenever I reflect on the terrifying vagaries that are not covered in my rather meager homeowners policy. 

As I said, I am loathed to start anew.  The task, feels daunting.  I was never the martyr and hold no illusion that either my finest phrase or most generous deed might bring even the already most pious any closer to God.  Never the less, I try and practice what I preach.  My garden, while it provides me no revenue and precious little to eat, is still a source of encouragement and reassurance that should I be forced to, my family should not altogether, starve.

I live in a house which was built 30 years after Thoreau built his home on Walden Pond in what is known as the valley of the pioneers, a part of New England which survived, just barely, being submerged under water, in a grand engineering effort to secure drinking water for eastern Massachusetts, including Concord, where Henry David once lived.  On reflection, I wonder if I should stop here, resigned as I am to the realization that this is but one lamentable demonstration that Thoreau's enterprise, while certainly an

intellectual feast, has fallen, in practice on, and continues to excite only deaf ears.

Speaking of reservoirs, my neighbors, one in particular, make sport at my expense whenever he spies me collecting rainwater.  After a good rainfall, of which there are many in New England, I can regularly be seen transferring the water from my rain barrel into my collection of plastic gallon milk bottles and storing them in stacks in my garage.  I have, you see, become loathed to use public, fluoridated drinking water in the operation of my necessary when water falls with such abundance from the skies around Athol.

So when he laughs and suggests that there is better commerce to which I could be employed, not that such phrasings would ever percolate into his consciousness, I reply that Thoreau would approve and that is more than enough

Perhaps, in my own way, I tend to my garden and rain barrel for much the same reasons as he tended to his enterprise, to learn by the doing what is otherwise taken for granted without any preconceived notion of what there would be to learn.  And I do mostly what I know how to do, not surprisingly, as Emerson noted,

"The common experience is that man fits himself as well as he can to the customary details of that work or trade he falls into, and tends it as a dog turns a spit. Then is he part of the machine he moves; the man is lost. Until he can manage to communicate himself to others in his full stature and proportion, he does not yet find his vocation."

The machine I have become is the information server.  It travels the world wide web of the internet. Day and night I toil upon it both for sustenance, I am a programmer of such mechanisms as facilitate this font of modern commerce, and for intellectual fulfillment, given the collected literature, which allows a four pound laptop to contain the collected works for all mankind seemingly in a single volume.  Indeed, in my desire to fully embrace the reach of these cyber-capabilities, I have even accepted online ordination

in a quest to drink the wine of spirituality that is to be had in the volumes of spiritualism pouring onto this information highway from all the corners of the globe.

I hear Henry David saying "as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched"

 That corporations profit for the sake of our vanity, he is, of course, quite correct.  Most of what one finds on the web merely proves how little the world has changed.  Or, at least, how little man, within the world has changed. 

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