by Rebecca Baumgartner
I’m trying to read Walden. I also own a phone that gives me instantaneous access to the internet. These two things seem fundamentally at odds.
Whether our phone usage is a literal addiction that operates on the brain in the same way that alcohol and other addictive substances do, or whether the term “addiction” in this case is merely a metaphor, reasonable people agree that there is a problem with the way we use our phones.
To own a smartphone is to look at a smartphone – a lot, often to the detriment of our happiness, productivity, relationships, social skills, and awareness of the world around us (both in the mundane yet potentially deadly “Hey, the light turned green” sort of way and the abstract “Look at that beautiful cloud” sort of way).
Most of us are worried about, frustrated about, and/or ashamed of who we become when our phones are in our hands. Obviously, this is not true of all smartphone users, but it is true enough, for enough people, that we should take heed of the insight underlying the generalization.
While I haven’t fallen into the pit of Devil’s Snare that is Instagram or TikTok (or whatever the coolest data harvesting app is right now), I don’t consider myself at all virtuous when it comes to how I use my phone. This is because I let it consistently keep me from doing the things I truly love – first and foremost among them, reading.
It’s not just that having a phone always at hand ruins my concentration and makes reading more difficult. It does that, for sure. But it’s also that having a tiny portal to the internet a few inches away makes particular types of reading even more difficult. If a book demands a level of engagement that seems deliberately calculated to drive a 2025 reader insane – as Walden does – it comes to seem philosophically impossible, or at least unreasonably hard, to make your way through it when your phone remains a viable option for your attention. As it always is.
Take the following passage, and try to imagine reading pages upon pages of this level of detailed prose without pausing to see what’s new on the internet:
The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not, and within what period, nobody knows, though, as usual, many pretend to know. It is commonly higher in the winter and lower in the summer, though not corresponding to the general wet and dryness. I can remember when it was a foot or two lower, and also when it was at least five feet higher, than when I lived by it. There is a narrow sand-bar running into it, with very deep water on one side, on which I helped boil a kettle of chowder, some six rods from the main shore, about the year 1824, which it has not been possible to do for twenty-five years; and on the other hand, my friends used to listen with incredulity when I told them, that a few years later I was accustomed to fish from a boat in a secluded cover in the woods, fifteen rods from the only shore they knew, which place was long since converted into a meadow. But the pond has risen steadily for two years, and now, in the summer of ‘52, is just five feet higher than when I lived there, or as high as it was thirty years ago, and fishing goes on again in the meadow. This makes a difference of level, at the outside, of six or seven feet; and yet the water shed by the surrounding hills is insignificant in amount, and this overflow must be referred to causes which affect the deep springs. This same summer the pond has begun to fall again. It is remarkable that this fluctuation, whether periodical or not, appears thus to require many years for its accomplishment. I have observed one rise and a part of two falls, and I expect that a dozen or fifteen years hence the water will again be as low as I have ever known it.
Did you make it to the end? Did you skim it? Personally, I found my attention ebbing around the part about the narrow sand-bar where he once boiled a kettle of chowder. Are you kidding me with this?
If I had to describe my emotional state while reading this excruciatingly detailed chapter about Walden Pond (I have been merciful and only given you a small taste), I would describe it as angry. Not bored: angry. What arrogance to assume anyone wants to spend their time reading about this! This is like being trapped in a conversation with someone lacking the social skills to realize that their story is the most boring thing in the entire universe.
But is it the content that’s boring, or are we simply less capable of appreciating it? I propose that we’re the boring ones. Or more precisely, our thinking is too small and frantic to follow where Thoreau’s mind goes. It’s the same reason we find meditation so hard and boring. It’s the same reason most of us haven’t stared off into space at all in the past 15 years. It’s why you never see anyone waiting in line without a phone in their hands. Our minds have seemingly lost the ability to sink into an awareness of and interest in our surroundings that Thoreau presupposes his readers will share.
After all, there’s nothing inherently more boring about the water level of a pond than about the way a random YouTuber has organized their freezer. In fact, if the pond description is well-written, it can even be a thing of beauty, while no amount of freezer organization ever could. And yet, I’d bet money that most of us would have less trouble focusing on a freezer-org video than reading Walden with our undivided attention. Thoreau’s book is a pearl before swine, and we have just enough non-swine in us to feel this to be the case, and it makes us angry.
It’s certainly possible that even readers in 1852 would have found this level of description a bit much – but probably far fewer of them than today. Others may have accepted this somewhat pedantic description of Walden Pond as a necessarily slow interlude positioned between more vivid chapters about the local townspeople, housekeeping, animals, and political and literary musings.
In any case, I strongly suspect that readers in Thoreau’s day would have extended more patience towards the narrative, knowing that the author did not owe them a nonstop rip-roaring time, any more than anyone else conversing with them did. Sometimes you have to hear about some dude’s boring update on the pond he lives next to: that’s just life. Sometimes you have to wait for the rain to come or the fever to break. You have to wait for the sun to rise, the fish to bite, or the year to end. These things can’t be rushed, and maybe a typical reader from that time period would have felt that to really get a sense of Thoreau’s life in the woods, the description of the pond couldn’t be rushed, either.
It’s tempting to attach moral judgments to these kinds of cultural differences between people back then and people now: People were so patient and mindful in those days – they really knew how to appreciate the simple things in life. But I think we should resist the temptation to romanticize our forebears. The patience of Thoreau’s original readers did not necessarily make them morally better than us. They were products of their environment, just as we are, and they shouldn’t be given undue credit simply for existing before the internet.
But it’s undeniable that there is a cultural divide between me and a reader in 1852 that makes it harder for me to read Walden than it (presumably) would have been for them, even though I’ve read many other books from the 19th century without struggling so much. I think this is because it often asks its readers to hold just one thought in mind while Thoreau examines it from every possible angle with a magnifying glass. For many modern readers, including me, that skill of holding fast to one thought for pages and pages has atrophied.
Walden is the sort of book that feels like a natural object – maybe a stone, imperfectly shaped and flecked with different shades of mineral. It’s a tale told by a naturalist, but one who isn’t trying to impress you or even really keep your attention. It’s no David Attenborough documentary, designed to bring you along, teach you something, make the world fit into your TV screen, and earn your attention.
The world that Thoreau describes, and perhaps Thoreau himself, couldn’t care less about earning your attention. It is there, and you can observe it, and learn something about your world and yourself – or not. It’s up to you. Nothing is relying on your engagement. Nature is not designed for your convenience, nor is it calibrated to your preferences. It is the anti-phone, delivered with flinty Yankee indifference.
Even though I consider myself a pretty patient reader, when I sit down with this book, my mind takes a long time to switch into the lower gears at which Thoreau was writing, the gears you need to use to gain traction up a steep hill. It’s not just a matter of slowing down, either – an engine in first gear is not simply going slower, but also exerting more pulling power, more torque. And this is exactly what my brain feels like it’s doing. There is resistance there, but the kind of resistance that will take me somewhere – up a hill, through mud, from a complete standstill to somewhere else.
By contrast, when I pick up my phone, there’s no friction. Everything becomes slippery smooth, the path of least resistance, like a Zamboni for my attentional load. My attention can glide over the surface of a screen. I can check my email without even intending to; the slope deposits me there even before I have a chance to pick a destination.
Each time I return to the passage about the water level of Walden Pond, I have to mentally shift back down to first gear. And just like you can’t cram a car’s transmission from fifth to first gear without going through the gears in between, there’s an adjustment. A new kind of mind is required, almost. I have spent weeks on a single chapter in this way, until my mental gearbox is exhausted and the muddy hill seems less and less worth the effort.
This is the real explanation of what people mean when they say “I want to read more but I can’t find the time.” Being a reader of any kind in 2025, but particularly a reader of works like Walden, does not mean becoming a person who “has more time”; it means getting used to shifting down to first gear while the culture is racing past you in fifth gear.
This is all well and good, but when faced with the choice between applying the heavy torque of an uphill slog, or gliding effortlessly down an icy-slick slope, how can we possibly be expected to choose the slog? Even if the reward at the top of the hill is more worthwhile than whatever awaits us at the bottom of the smooth slope, a human brain has to rebel against its dopamine-loving instincts to choose the harder course.
The real tragedy is that although the slope may be easy, it doesn’t actually take you anywhere: there is no bottom, no destination. It’s an infinite glide to nowhere. This is why people swipe on their phones like slot machines, being led to believe that they’re one scroll away from finding “it,” whatever “it” may be. Even if “phone addiction” is a metaphor, it is a damningly apt one, and sufficiently chilling in its metaphorical sense to make us sit up and take notice.
Reading Walden and other books that operate at those lower, crunchier gears is an autological experience – the act of reading it all but compels you to adopt the mindset it describes. Whether this was on purpose or was just the way Thoreau’s mind worked, he knew something we need reminding of these days: Doing the right thing slowly and with difficulty will always be better than doing the wrong thing quickly and effortlessly.
So then, is it possible for a person who owns a smartphone to read Walden – that is, can we choose resistance that gets us somewhere in favor of the infinite glide to nowhere? I don’t think there’s a clear answer. I think we’re living out the question in real time.
A sufficiently dedicated person can definitely make it happen, but it probably helps to put the phone in another room, expect moments of discomfort, and trust that it’ll pay off in the end. When it does pay off – and it very often does – you’ll finally feel like you’re getting somewhere.
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