But what started out as a necessary compulsion to get out of the house after being injured turned into a happenstance series of brilliant meditations on the philosopher and what it means to be part of the natural world. The visual artist Ben Shattuck didn’t set out at first to write a book about retracing some of Henry David Thoreau’s most famous journeys across New England, as detailed in texts like Cape Cod, A Walk to Wachusett, and The Maine Woods.
