A bearded man in a waistcoat and tall straw hat emerged from a cabin on Walden Pond and faced a group of people wearing shorts and sunglasses. They were curious about his solitary life in the woods.
They addressed him as Henry David Thoreau, the 19th-century transcendentalist writer, but they were speaking to Richard Smith, a historian who has been Walden Pond State Reservation’s resident Thoreau impersonator since 1999.
“How do you get your food?” a boy asked. “Do you hunt for it and fish?”
“I have given up the eating of flesh,” the man answered. “I find it disagreeable to my conscience. My bean field is about a hundred rods back.”
A woman asked: “Do you feel that diet was healthy for you? Because some historians, after your death, questioned if you were malnourished.”
“I feel healthier than I have ever been. Being in the woods is like a tonic.”
“Do you think you’ll live here forever?” someone else asked.
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