 Reprinted
with permission from Preservation magazine,
www.preservationonline.org.
The Short Answer: An exchange with Don Henley
Don Henley is the Grammy Award-winning
cofounder of The Eagles and the founder of the Walden Woods Project.
How did you get involved with the
legacy of Henry David Thoreau?
In the late 1960s I was struggling to come to terms with
my father's illness. He had been stricken by heart disease, which eventually
took his life when I was 25. Encouraged by professors at the University of
North Texas, I read some Thoreau and Emerson. Transcendental thought, as
expressed by these two great American writers, influenced my life in a very
fundamental way. It helped me cope but also prompted me to think about our
relationship to the world around us and guided me toward a lifelong interest
in historic preservation and conservation.
Like most people, I believed that Thoreau's Walden Woods
in Concord and Lincoln, Mass., was protected by the state or federal
government, but only the pond and the forest immediately surrounding it is
in a state park. More than 2,000 acres of Walden Woods lie outside. In the
fall of 1989 I saw a news story about two Thoreau scholars who had formed a
grassroots organization to prevent two large commercial projects from being
built within the woods. I telephoned to offer assistance and flew to Boston,
where I saw the magnitude of the challenge. To build public awareness I
founded the Walden Woods Project with the support of many other dedicated
preservationists in 1990.
Why is saving Walden Woods important?
The pond and the woods that inspired the writing of Walden
are historically significant not only because they were the setting for a
great American classic, but also because Walden Woods was Henry David
Thoreau's living laboratory, where he formulated his theory of forest
succession, a precursor to contemporary ecological science. Many people
refer to Walden Woods as the birthplace of the American conservation
movement because it was there that Thoreau called for us to set aside land
in its natural state, an impulse that would later lead to the creation of
our national parks. If we can't protect the place where the idea of land
conservation was so early asserted, how can we hope to save other places of
historical and environmental significance?
What is the status of the Walden Woods
Project today?
It has protected nearly 140 acres of land surrounding
Walden Pond. About 65 percent of Walden Woods' 2,680 acres is now
permanently in conservation, but other historically significant and
environmentally sensitive tracts are in urgent need of protection. The
immediate objective is to restore a 35-acre closed landfill near Walden Pond
and acquire agricultural land in Walden Woods about to come on the market.
The headquarters of the Walden Woods Project is a historic building that is
an official Save America's Treasures project, a 1905 English Tudor house
built by Boston philanthropist Henry Lee Higginson, founder of the Boston
Symphony Orchestra.
Are you a preservationist or an
environmentalist?
I'm both. After all, our historic landmarks are a part of
our environment.
Which is more threatened?
Since millions of acres of land are paved over each year,
one could effectively argue that the natural environment faces the greater
threat. Yet at the same time, urban sprawl continues its relentless
digestion of our open spaces and eats away at our historic buildings and
landmarks. This threat is compounded by the fact that much of our historic
built environment has fallen into a severe state of disrepair.
Are there other common interests?
Environmentalists and preservationists share a common
goal—the preservation of the "common wealth," the natural and built
treasures that define us as Americans. Whether they be historic buildings,
cultural landscapes, national landmarks, urban or national parks, wilderness
areas, or coastlines, the same threats loom large—a lack of funding for
preservation, unbridled urban sprawl, and the increasing pressures exerted
on dwindling resources by population growth. In recent years, far too much
of our commonwealth has been sold off or given away to special interests.
What would Thoreau make of America
today?
Trying to predict what he would think about anything is
risky, but I believe he'd be immeasurably pleased that our nation has set
aside large tracts of land as national parks, national forests, and wildlife
refuges. I think he'd be disappointed to learn that we are not doing more to
protect what little remains of our wilderness areas and open spaces. He'd
also take pleasure in our efforts to preserve our historic buildings, our
artifacts, and the symbols of our cultural heritage but would chastise us
for not doing more.
Thoreau would bemoan the fact that we have become a nation
driven by consumption, alienated from the joys of simplicity that he
expounded upon. I expect he would scold us for enslaving ourselves to our
PCs, PDAs, and big-screen TVs and urge us to get outside.
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