He might be alone on this one.

I think that this chapter, in a way, is the most personal so far. (Warning: I read it over a week ago and just skimmed it again now, so I hope I'm recalling this accurately.) But when I was reading "Solitude" I found myself agreeing with Thoreau at points and at other times not being so sure.

I love being alone sometimes, too. The peace and quiet of being by oneself is nonpareil, especially on a walk in the woods on a fall day or through a city's streets during a nighttime snowfall. But for myself, I don't know if I can give solitude the kind of preference that Thoreau seems to attribute to it. While reading and nodding throughout, I couldn't get rid of the memory in the back of my mind of my trip to Corsica during my year in France. I went there alone and had intended to stay for 10 days, but because I was there before the regular tourist season began, there were very few other people on the road and by day 6, I was so lonely traveling around that I decided to cut my trip short and head back to Dijon. With that memory in mind, I take "Solitude" almost to be an admonition. I agree to much - in an academic sense - with what Thoreau wrote in this chapter that I being to feel like cutting my trip short was the expression of a personal failing of mine. And maybe it was. I wonder if I were in a similar situation today, if I would react in the same way.

But then again, who is to say what proportion of solitude and company is ideal? I remember once listening to one of the drivers at the tour company I worked for last summer talking about how when he decided to move to Alaska, he chose to live in a small town called Girdwood about 40 minutes from Anchorage. He didn't think of much people of moved to Anchorage, believing that people who came to Alaska to live in that city had "missed the point." My immediate reaction was to think about all the people living in the wilderness of the state with literally hundreds of miles between them and the next person and I wondered if they might not have the same opinion of people who move to Girdwood.

So, in light of all our talk about Thoreau's exaggeration for the purpose of getting his readers' attention, should we assume he's playing up his love of solitude? From having read the first few pages of the next chapter, I wonder. Then again, maybe he's being entirely sincere.

"Society is commonly too cheap." Or maybe he just didn't like his friends that much.