Problem is, Thoreau never lived in the modern age. If he had, he might have been more like Theodore Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber. Kaczynski didn’t just write diaries about living in the forest. He wasn’t just happy to sit on a pumpkin or a velvet cushion. He holed up in the woods, growing crazier by the day, until he ended up building mail bombs to kill people. In our time, Nature has become the favorite accomplice of killers, rapists, homegrown terrorists, and other assorted nutcases. The Walden Ponds conceal the bodies and cars of their hapless victims. The lovely trees and shrubs that so thrilled Thoreau now provide ample hiding places for these miscreants, creating opportunities for ambush, mayhem, murder, and terror. Helping them do God’s work. Thoreau was lucky. He died before the modern age. If some psycho like the Unabomber didn’t get you in the woods, Nature herself would. With her fangs, her stingers, her claws, her jaws, her poisons. And her cold, her rain, her darkness, and her freezing wind.
