The Dusty World: Wildness and Higher Laws in Thoreau's Walden

To the attentive reader, the high contrast between Thoreau's depiction of a life in conformity to "Higher Laws" and his depiction of Wildness can seem to be yet another endorsement of nature/culture dualism. I argue that while such a dualism frames much of Thoreau's "experiment" at Walden Pond, a deeper understanding of the relationship between Higher Laws and Wildness emerges which is decidedly nondualistic, an understanding for which I invoke the Buddhist image of the Dusty World. I conclude with some reflections on Val Plumwood's recent work on the nature/culture dualisms at work in current discussions about wilderness.