– Task 3: Taking Thoreau's lead, can you imagine ways in which our technologically affected lives can be wedded with a sensual acuity for nature?

I am standing at a cross road, waiting to cross the street. Three other people are waiting with me. One middle aged men is absorbed with a friend on his phone; he speaks rackety without paying attention to his surrounding world. The other two are teenaged girls; both are wearing headphones and listening to their preferential music. Nobody – but me, hears the blackbird’s first timid song of the season.    

In the fourth chapter “Sounds” from his book “Walden”, Henry David Thoreau illustrates the pure sounds of nature, but also the sounds the railroad makes when passing Walden Pond a few miles from his cabin. Through his picturesque description the image of a gigantic “iron horse”, or “fiery dragon” arises. (Thoreau 125) This picture could be regarded as a gentle insinuation of a concern towards the modern technology; the locomotive’s noise seems to adumbrate the more diffident sounds of nature. But Thoreau’s language does not allude to a kind of anxiety, but rather to an admiration for the locomotive – for technology. (Thoreau 125) He manages to combine the sounds of the railroad, of the bells from different church clocks, with the sounds of nature by letting nature absorb and then echo the artificial sounds. This combination results in the blissful wedding of naturalness and artificiality. But is such a combination really possible – at least in today’s world?

Other than the world Thoreau lived in 150 years ago, the modern world is saturated with sounds, odours, and imagery of artificial origin. With every day the natural world fades more and more away and becomes less important to the human inhabitants of our earth. The more it fades the more we need to make ourselves aware of nature, and we have to start closest to ourselves – with our own percipience of naturalness. One way of raising awareness could be by taking a moment to consciously listening to the sounds we can hear when there is no artificial sound around, when we intentionally switch off our smartphones, tablets and Ipods and try to find the natural sounds concealed by the noise of the modern and technological world. Maybe we will be able to perceive a similar fusion of nature and the technological world as Thoreau did in the woods around Walden Pond. 

Nowadays, technology might be quite an important part of modern life, but people should not forget that they do not originate from technology but that they emanate from nature. Without nature the humankind will not survive – no technology will change that. Thus, nature does not only deserve protection, but, even more, it deserves appreciation. Maybe, people could appreciate nature by sensuously perceiving it once in a while?

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 2006. Print.