Could not Spare Any More Time

Thoreau lived on Walden Pond for two years, two months, and two days. During that time, he wrote A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849). He also kept a journal of his musings on and observations of nature. He left the cabin when Emerson asked him to come and stay with his wife and children while he, Emerson, was away in Europe.

Thoreau later wrote:

“I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one.”

But he also admitted in his personal journal that he often missed the woods and wished he could go back.