Visitors in the Woods

A story about trying to live deliberately.

In the woods near the town of Concord there lived a woodcutter. He worked about a deep pond among the trees. The water was clear and the forest quiet. Farmers from Concord sometimes hired him to cut posts or fell trees for fuel. When the work was done he went back to the woods, where a man could hear his own axe and little else.

The woodcutter rose with the birds and worked until the light failed. His meals were simple. If his dog caught something, that helped. If not, bread and a little meat would do. Rainy days he sometimes spent under a shed with a book someone had lent him. He liked books well enough, though he never hurried through them.

This life suited him.

One spring a philosopher from Concord came to the pond. He brought boards, tools, and several books. Standing in a clearing by the water, he measured the ground carefully, as if the earth might move if he did not attend to it. Then he counted his steps across the clearing and wrote something in a notebook.

After a while he began to dig. In the weeks that followed he built a small house near the pond. He worked carefully, fitting the boards together and setting the chimney stones one by one. When the house was finished he planted beans in long straight rows and walked among them often with a hoe.

Sometimes he sat outside the door reading ancient books. Sometimes he walked about the pond speaking aloud to himself. At other times he wrote long passages in a notebook. He kept an account of many things: the boards he used, the nails he bought, the beans he planted, and the days he spent in the woods.

Visitors also came.

Men from Concord walked out to see the philosopher who had gone to live alone by the pond. Some stayed a while and talked. Others brought news from the town. A few came often. The philosopher received them gladly. They sat beneath the pines or beside the door of the house and spoke of many matters.

The pond had once held only the wind in the branches and the knocking of a woodpecker. Now, at times, it held arguments about books, long speeches about the proper way to live, and the laughter of men who had walked far to visit someone living alone. The woodcutter, passing through the woods with his axe on his shoulder, sometimes heard them from a distance. The sound traveled easily over the still water.

Curious about the philosopher who had come to live alone with so much company, the woodcutter went to visit him one morning. The philosopher was alone that morning, sitting outside the door of his house with a book open on his knee. The woodcutter came out of the trees carrying his axe.

“Good morning,” said the philosopher. “Do you work in these woods?”

“I make posts,” said the woodcutter. “Sometimes fifty in a day if the ground is good.”

“Fifty!” said the philosopher with interest. “That is excellent industry. And what do you do when the day’s work is done?”

“I go home,” said the woodcutter.

The philosopher laughed. “But here,” he said, gesturing toward the pond and the trees, “one may live with very little. I have found that a man who simplifies his life finds the universe simpler also.”

“That may be,” said the woodcutter.

The philosopher seemed pleased. “And what did you have for supper last night?”

“A woodchuck,” said the woodcutter. “My dog caught it.”

“Ah!” said the philosopher. “A man may live very well on what nature provides.”

The woodcutter nodded and looked out among the trees.

The philosopher closed his book upon his knee. “Do you read much?” he asked.

“Sometimes,” said the woodcutter. “When it rains.”

“What do you read?”

“Whatever comes to hand.”

The philosopher held up the book he had been reading. “This,” he said, “is Homer. One of the great poets of the world.”

“I have heard of him,” said the woodcutter.

“He speaks of heroes and the deeds of men,” said the philosopher. “Books such as this keep a man from wasting his days.”

“That may be,” said the woodcutter.

They sat quietly a moment.

At last the woodcutter spoke. “Do you enjoy living here?”

“Very much,” said the philosopher. “A man who lives deliberately soon discovers what life requires and what it does not.”

The woodcutter nodded again. “I enjoy myself well enough here chopping,” he said. “I want no better sport.”

The philosopher smiled. “But after such labor,” he asked, “are you not tired at night?”

The woodcutter considered this carefully. “I never was tired in my life.”

The philosopher studied him with interest. “And tell me,” he said, “are you satisfied with yourself?”

The woodcutter seemed puzzled by the question. “Some men are satisfied with one thing,” he said slowly, “and some with another.”

The philosopher nodded hesitantly. After a moment he said, “Do you never wish the world were improved?”

The woodcutter looked about him at the trees, the water, and the sky above the pond. “No,” he said at last. “I like it well enough.”

The two sat quietly for a time. At length the philosopher opened his book again. “Good day to you,” he said.

“Good day,” said the woodcutter. He rose, lifted his axe to his shoulder, and went again among the pines where his work waited.

The philosopher remained by the pond with wrinkled brow, thinking about how a man ought to live.

The woodcutter, having found the place where the next post should be cut, raised his axe and laughed.

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