What’s the back story to The Guide? 

I fell in love with the book Walden long before I had a chance to visit it’s namesake place.  My reading took place in Minnesota during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Thoreau’s messages about civil rights, non-violence, and environmental thinking were popping up everywhere.  My first of many visits to the pond was with my family in 1985, shortly after moving to New England to become a professor.   Since 2003, I’ve been teaching Walden to college students, with an annual field trip being a routine part of the course.

During Thoreau’s 2017 bicentennial birthday celebration, I was invited to guide Walden Pond field trips for three national organizations.  During trip preparations, my 2-page student handout morphed into a short pamphlet for teachers enrolled in an NEH-funded (National Endowment for the Humanities) workshop. At that turning point was my wife Kristine’s suggested I share the ideas more broadly with those teachers who couldn’t come by publishing an actual book.

Though conceived in a day and drafted in a month, it took eight additional months to finish the book as a team project.