It wasn’t mere crankiness that made Henry David Thoreau suspicious of civilization and all its defenders, title, and awards. Rather, he thought that civilization already had more champions than it deserved, and that it was not his particular genius to…
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The lakes of northern Michigan were mysterious to me when I was growing up. There was always at least one undeveloped side and a few swampy coves on each. I saw the trees on the lake’s edge as the border…
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Anthropologists have long known that the only thing undeveloped in “primitive” peoples is their technology. Their human interactions are as sophisticated as those of “civilized” societies. They make the same value distinctions that have been important to human communities of…
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In spite of a couple hard storms, we had many warm days during the winter. In February, for three successive Sundays, I drove to Seneca Rocks to enjoy some unseasonably good weather. The first time, when I arrived at the…
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I was typing in the main office when a salesman stopped by to give our secretary his card. With an associate, he had recently opened a computer sales and service company in nearby Pendleton County, by area the least-populous county…
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Twenty-five years ago I bought a small cabin in a woods on the Canadian side of Lake Huron. I paid a mere $4,000 for it, since it was a hundred yards off the lake, and since it was primitive, with…
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