"Walden" or "Life in the Woods" was written during Henry David Thoreau's stay at Walden Pond, an excursion that lasted over two years. It was here that Thoreau conducted his experiment with life.
             I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. (Thoreau 835)
             Walden, or Life in the Woods, is a well-known book admired for its meaning. The thing that was so enticing about this story was the knowledge of its development.
             When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there for two years and two months. (788-799)
             These words began Thoreau's story of his experiment of simple living at Walden Pond, a sixty-two-acre body of water in Concord, Massachusetts. Thoreau chose to build a cabin on land belonging to his close friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson. On this land, Thoreau wrote a series of eighteen essays and journals, "describing Thoreau's idealistic creed as affected by and expressed in his life at the Pond." (Hart 797-798).
             Most of what Thoreau writes about is based on his first year living by the pond. He only touches upon his night in jail, a trip to Mount Katahdin, and scientific studies of the second year. Each day Thoreau would come up with new thoughts and feelings. He used his mind and listened to his heart to write Walden. Therefore every word meant something. Thoreau was firm in his belief that we should live for ourselves. He believes that we should do things our way rather than copy our parents or anyone else. "I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible" (Thoreau 825). Thoreau influence
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