Micro-Landscapes of the Anthropocene

Mapping Thoreau’s Sonderweb

The idea that we can trace the movements of humans and nonhuman animals by following the threads they leave behind brings to mind Thoreau’s piece on the ‘art of Walking’. Through writing, Thoreau articulates his own sonderweb when he describes how he walked ‘first along by the river, and then the brook, and then the meadow and the wood-side’. By using anaphora ‘and then’ to mimic his ongoing mobility through the landscape,  language allows Thoreau to describe the literal pathways he takes guided by the ‘subtle magnetism in Nature’.

Yet Thoreau is also attentive to the trails left by nonhuman animals; he walks ‘without crossing a road except where the fox and the mink do.’ Perhaps this is Thoreau partaking in 'sonderweaving’ since he verbalises his act of thinking about the nonhuman animals he ‘encounters’ on the sonderweb. While Thoreau admits that he ‘cannot easily shake off the village’ which precludes a more authentic connection with the non-human world, the act of walking nevertheless enables an ‘act of relationality’. That is to say, walking allows Thoreau to literally ‘weave’ his body through the world in such a way as to entangle himself with the paths created by others.

George Raptis (z5206747)

Contents of this reply: