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The choice

by Stéphanie Chasseloup

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

Henry David Thoreau (Walden or, Life in the Woods, Penguin Books 2016)

We’re living at the speed of a time that doesn’t belong to us, every day we wisely choose not to choose.
We gave up fight.
We don’t feel the need to really believe in something.
Our curiosity has shrunken.
Beauty is belittled.

Where can we restart from?
In a wood, up a tree, to learn again about that nature we are part of and that nature we are made of.

To think like Walden and be as stubborn as Cosimo.

10 SUGGESTED READINGS

LA CASA DI CARTONE
Roberto Moliterni, Quodlibet 2018

WALDEN OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS
Henry David Thoreau, Penguin Books 2016

JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN
Edgar Rice Burroughs, Borgo Press 2002

VARFÖR HÅLLER MAN PÅ?
Fredrik Sjöberg, Albert Bonniers 2012

I DIARI DELL’APOCALISSE
Jack London, Piano B 2014

IN PERSUASION NATION
George Saunders, Bloomsbury 2017

THE ONES THAT GOT AWAY
Stephen Graham Jones, Prime Books 2011

SHINRIN-YOKU
Qing Li, Penguin Life 2018

INTO THE WILD
Jon Krakauer, Pan Macmillan 2007

L’HOMME DES BOIS
Pierric Bailly, P.O.L. 2017