Tom Slayton, 66, a retired longtime editor of Vermont Life magazine, was a Thoreau buff for years, but admitted to never reading “Walden” cover to cover until three years ago.
Once he did, he was drawn to Walden Pond and soon afterward decided to visit the author’s other haunts and make a book of it. Battling an arthritic hip and wearing out a pair of hiking boots, he traipsed all over New England in a three-year quest to find Thoreau, nature and a bit of himself. He’s written Searching for Thoreau, (here reviewed in the Sauk Valley News) which pairs analysis of “Walden” and other lesser-known Thoreau works with step-by-step descriptions of visits to the places that inspired Thoreau.
The resulting 240-page paperback, illustrated by Slayton’s 36-year-old son, Ethan – draws heavily on “Walden,” “Cape Cod,” “The Maine Woods” and Thoreau’s journals, describing in lyrical detail the flora, fauna and sometimes-treacherous paths Thoreau walked more than 150 years ago and that Slayton followed.
Walden
That book is so boring it made people standing near me while I was reading it fall asleep.