27 hear your own pulse. These were truly inspiring. These walks in the wilderness had the power to transform any youth who participated. Five days on the trail being 100% self-sufficient could transform them faster than anything in the world. Seeing them walk out of the wilderness standing taller and more confident than when they began was always a huge reward. One of our most famous surveyors in American literary history wrote a much more eloquent lecture on walking, nature, and life, entitled “Walking,” which he presented 10 times between 1851 and 1860. After his death, the lecture was published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862. In “Walking,” Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), writer, naturalist, philosopher, and land surveyor, expounded on the virtues of walking and the “absolute freedom and wildness” found in nature. “The art of walking is that of taking walks” according to Thoreau. I think surveyors have this in their blood. Thoreau references his surveying experience several times throughout his lecture and he does so in ways we can all relate to and with a truth that may make some of us cringe. “I saw the fences half consumed, their ends lost in the middle of the prairie, and some worldly miser with a surveyor looking after his bounds, while heaven had taken place around him, and he did not see the angels going to and fro, but was looking for an old post-hole in the midst In “Walking,” Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), writer, naturalist, philosopher, and land surveyor, expounded on the virtues of walking and the “absolute freedom and wildness” found in nature. “The art of walking is that of taking walks” according to Thoreau. I think surveyors have this in their blood. of paradise. I looked again, and saw him standing in the middle of a boggy Stygian fen, surrounded by devils, and he had found his bounds without a doubt, three little stones, where a stake had been driven, and looking nearer, I saw that the Prince of Darkness was his surveyor.” “Walking” contains other references to surveying which I will let you discover on your own with a simple Google search. Thoreau referenced his surveying career in numerous works including “Life Without Principle,” where he reminisced on a frustration some of us may relate to. “As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct.” In “The Succession of Forest Trees,” Thoreau sounds as if he is opining on future right of entry statutes. “In my capacity of surveyor, I have often talked with some of you, my employers, at your dinner-tables, after having gone round and round and behind your farming, and ascertained exactly what its limits were. Moreover, taking a surveyor’s and a naturalist’s liberty, I have been in the habit of going across your lots much oftener than is usual, as many of you, perhaps to your sorrow, are aware. Yet many of you, to my relief, have seemed not to be aware of it; and when I came across you in some out-of-the-way nook of your farms, have inquired, with an air of surprise, if I were not lost, since you had never seen me in that part of the town or county before; when, if the truth were known, and it had not been for betraying my secret, I might with more propriety have inquired if you were not lost, since I had never seen you there before. I have several times shown the proprietor the shortest way out of his wood-lot.” Thoreau was Harvard educated and by many accounts may have been conflicted between his beliefs on capitalism and his surveying work. Thoreau’s surveying career occurred in the latter portion of his life and even if conflicted, the examples above seem to demonstrate it was an important part of his life. For a more in depth look at Henry David Thoreau, check out Patrick Chura’s book published in 2010 titled, “Thoreau the Land Surveyor.” One last quote by Thoreau from his work “Life Without Principle” is reflective of most surveyors I know: “Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.” I’ve met few surveyors who do not love what they do. References • Genius.com: Walking (Full Text). • Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetry foundation.org/poets/henry-david-thoreau. • thoreau-online.org. Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org The Lost Surveyor
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