Henry David Thoreau, noted transcendentalist, wrote Walden as a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-reliance.

Nature was a study for the essayist, naturalist, and environmentalist David Thoreau. He communed from his cabin on Walden Pond, owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson, to "live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and... learn what it had to teach."

Walden is landmark book on self-reliance and simple living.