In his early years, the writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau was a restless young man with a romantic temperament, casting about for a way to make a living without giving up his freedom. At first, he thought that he might earn money picking berries, since working outside would require, as he put it in Walden (1854), “little distraction from my wonted moods.” Or maybe he could gather wild herbs and evergreens for sale in town.
In the end, though, the idea of doing even such light agricultural work for profit turned Thoreau off. He could not stand the idea of turning his beloved wild plants into commodities. In nineteenth-century New England’s industrializing economy, the traffic in consumer goods was getting busier every day. Thoreau saw buying and selling the fruits of the earth, not to mention other people’s labor, as a wicked business. “Trade curses everything it handles,” he declared.
And so it is curious to see Thoreau’s name and works conscripted nowadays for use in advertising, as commercial brands. From a Connecticut tea merchant, for instance, you can order a four-ounce tin of Henry David Thoreau’s Herbal Tisane Blend, a mix of apples, spearmint, and other ingredients mentioned in Thoreau’s writings. The promotional materials instruct shoppers to “imagine sitting at Walden Pond enjoying a quiet, peaceful moment with a cup of this caffeine-free tea.”
In the Walden videogame, available for Xbox, “players are surrounded by the beauty of the woods.” The program guides its users into a sojourn along the water’s edge. You have to survive, but your real mission is to find “inspiration.” Rather than an adventure, the game provides a virtual spiritual exercise.
“In the American imagination, Walden is the quintessential place of refuge,” according to the website of a Brooklyn-based design firm, known as Walden, whose products include a yoga mat and cushion set ($295) and a forest-scented aromatic mist ($68). The company’s founders define their “ethos” as a shared belief that “everyone needs a space of their own to reflect, be present, and find comfort.”
An herbal drink, an interactive meditation game, a yoga mat: what do these things have in common? When you purchase a Thoreau product, what are you being sold?
As I read through the advertisements, I am tempted to say that their emphasis is less on what the packages include than what they leave out. The tea has no caffeine. The game features hardly any action and no violence at all. In the online photos, the Walden bench sits alone in an otherwise empty room.
What you are buying, then, is less a physical object than an emotional or spiritual benefit. The advertisers call it by a few different names—refuge, quiet, being present. They are telling you that when you are alone, with Thoreau as your guide, you will achieve peaceful self-composure; you will find yourself detached from the hecticness of hyperactive work and entertainment. Your attention will be focused on what really matters. Thoreau products are therapies for people suffering from distraction.
