Walden

Thoreau describes the joy he finds in walking. Though he lives in solitude, he is far from bored, and his senses are ignited by the sights and sounds of the trees, the water, the animals. He writes:

Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled […] the wind still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and some creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose is never complete (222). 

When he returns from his walks, Thoreau sometimes finds that local people stopped by and “left their cards, either a bunch of flowers, or a wreath of evergreen, or a name in pencil on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip” (223). Aside from these occasional gifts, Thoreau is undisturbed by humans; his nearest neighbor is over a mile away. He feels as though the community of Concord might as well be another country because of how far removed he feels. 

Thoreau does not feel lonely without human interaction because he experiences “the friendship of the seasons” and “the most innocent and encouraging society” (225) in his natural environment. Furthermore, he extols the value of living without the cheap and unfulfilling "society of our gossips” (231), instead relying on the company of one’s own thoughts.

Thoreau does find enjoyment in the company of a mystical old settler and an elderly woman whose “memory runs back farther than mythology, and she can tell me the original of every fable, and on what fact every one is founded” (237). Both these figures seem to support rather than disrupt Thoreau’s serenity; they may well be symbols of his poetic imagination. 

As Thoreau explains, loneliness and being alone are not one and the same. He writes:

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. […] We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will (233).

Thoreau states that he is “naturally no hermit” and keeps three (symbolic) chairs in his house: “one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society” (240). He elaborates upon his small house’s hosting limitations, explaining that he prefers to communicate within the open space of the woods. He believes people need wide boundaries between themselves and other; he even mentions how he prefers having the pond between him and an acquaintance to whom he is talking. 

Caring more for his guests’ spiritual than physical sustenance, Thoreau is not in the habit of offering a great deal of food or wine. He proclaims that, nevertheless, he would have no trouble entertaining hundreds because people naturally adapt to the behaviors of those around them. In other words: if people observe that others are not eating, they do not feel hungry or lacking. 

Despite Thoreau’s lack of typical hospitality, he finds that he has more visitors than ever—more so than before his move to the woods. He also observes that these visits are rarely trivial; his company is much more personally engaged and their conversations are of a higher quality. 

Thoreau hosts travelers and runaway slaves on the Underground Railroad.

He is also inclined to entertain local laborers; he speaks particularly fondly of a French-Canadian woodsman (unnamed in Walden, though scholars have since identified the man as Alex Therien). Though Therien is functionally illiterate, Thoreau is impressed by his unencumbered ways of living and his peculiar wisdom. Thoreau recounts how a townsperson—who saw Therien whistling to himself—compared him to a “prince in disguise” (254). 

Impressed with how closely attuned to the natural world Therien seems, Thoreau compares him to Walden Pond itself. He writes that Therien suggests “there might be men of genius in the lowest grades of life […] who are as bottomless even as Walden Pond was thought to be, though they may be dark and muddy” (258).