So wrote Henry David Thoreau in 1854 in his classic tome on backwoods living, Walden; Or, Life in the Woods. It’s a book that elevates the experience of being alone to a semiexistential state, and a century and a half later, in a world of social media and information overload, it’s a book that seems more prescient than ever. In it, Thoreau abandons his comfortable city life for a rustic cabin in the Massachusetts woods, and in so doing, learns the benefits of self-sufficiency and self-reliance: the simple pleasures of chopping firewood, foraging for food and sitting in silent, solitary contemplation of nature.
The red sands of the Empty Quarter, Oman
PHOTOGRAPH: JUSTIN FOULKES
The Empty Quarter