Entertainment
The Eagles co-founder talks Walden Woods, AI, Buddhism in nature, and why he founded the Walden Woods Project.
Don Henley, an executive producer of the “Henry David Thoreau” documentary, speaks about the film to 600 people gathered at Concord Carlisle Regional High School on Monday, March 23. Richard Pasley
In December of 1989, Don Henley was cooking dinner in his LA home with the kitchen TV tuned to CNN.
“I overheard the words ‘Walden Woods’ and ‘commercial development.’ So I walked over to the TV and stood in front of it. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” the Eagles lead singer/co-founder tells me.
There was planned development near Henry David Thoreau’s old stomping grounds. He jotted down the names of locals protesting the development, and called the next day.
“I said, ‘I saw you on TV yesterday, and I’d like to help.’ I don’t think they had any idea who I was, which was fine. I started by sending a check,” Henley, 78, tells me in our recent phone interview.
But it wasn’t enough.
Three months later, the musician flew from LA to Boston, and toured Walden Woods to see the planned development spot.
To preserve it, Henley founded The Walden Woods Project.
Since 1990, the organization, based in Concord, has worked to preserve “the land, literature and legacy of Henry David Thoreau,” according to their website. The Project “uses the land it has protected in Walden Woods to foster an ethic of environmental stewardship and social responsibility, both cornerstones of Thoreau’s philosophy.”
The Executive Producers of “Henry David Thoreau” — Ken Burns and Don Henley — at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, prior to speaking before a capacity audience. – Richard Pasley
I first interviewed Henley almost a decade ago, for a short film he was producing with Ken Burns for the Walden Woods Project, “Walden.”
That short — directed by Burns proteges Erik and Christopher Loren Ewers — has sparked a full documentary: “Henry David Thoreau,” executive produced by Burns and Henley, directed by the Ewers brothers, airs March 30 and 31 on PBS at 9 p.m.
It boasts a talented cast: George Clooney narrates; Jeff Goldblum voices Thoreau; Ted Danson voices Ralph Waldo Emerson; Meryl Streep voices Lidian Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Mary Merrick Brooks, and Maria Thoreau; Tate Donovan voices William Ellery Channing.
I blazed through all three episodes.
It hits like a classic Burns documentary: Using hallmark voiceovers, the “Ken Burns effect,” and interviews with modern thinkers — Douglas Brinkley, Lois Brown, Bill McKibben, Michael Pollan, among them — to examine the life and work of the 19th-century transcendentalist and his circle of free-thinking pals.
Thoreau lovers will tell you, as tedious and dense and romantic as Thoreau’s writing can be, at the end of the day, he is a compass pointing toward basic truths: Slavery is bad, technology can be dangerous, nobody has an attention span anymore, we concentrate on man-made nonsense and details and lose the bigger picture.
Thoreau (1817–1862) can be a controversial figure. He’s a man of contradictions. Can be priggish and holier-than-thou, especially in “Walden,” like many 20-somethings.
I see him like a hippie kid at Harvard in the 1960s who got really into Eastern philosophy. At 27, he asked his buddy Emerson if he could build a cabin on his land, near a popular town pond, just a short walk from a bustling village. He spent a couple of years wandering from town to the cabin, hanging with friends, going home to do laundry, walking the woods, noticing the woods — and writing.
Thoreau wasn’t a hermit. He was a hippie. Maybe the first hipster. Living in a cabin near a popular public pond in the 1840s is the 2026 equivalent of #vanlife.
“Thoreau” is a wonderfully accessible introduction to the man and his works, and goes deep enough into Thoreau’s personal life in antebellum Concord, his seminal trips to Maine and Cape Cod, his family and health, that even the most ardent Henry fan will learn something.
Side note: I now need Jeff Goldblum to narrate a “Walden” audiobook. He brings dense passages to life here.
Portrait of Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1857 – Courtesy of Concord Free Public Library
When it comes to Thoreau-fandom, Henley is the real deal. He’s not some celebrity with a random cause. The 78-year-old talks about Thoreau like someone who has spent a long time digesting those words. Like someone who needs them. He sometimes quotes Thoreau verbatim. Might quote E.L. Doctrow, or Mark Twain, or Annie Dillard.
I called Henley, 78, at his home near LA. We went deep in a fascinating discussion on Massachusetts thinkers, AI, retirement from the Eagles, why he loves Thoreau, George Clooney, the symbolism of Walden Woods, and more.
Boston.com: We talked almost a decade ago when you and Ken Burns made a short film, “Walden.” You told me “Thoreau” evolved from that short. You’ve got an amazing cast here.
Don Henley: I recruited Ted Danson, Jeff Goldblum, Meryl Streep, and George Clooney. Mr. Clooney graciously agreed to narrate while in the middle of rehearsals for his Broadway debut, “Good Night, and Good Luck.” He spent a lot of time in a Manhattan recording studio during rehearsals, for which I will be eternally grateful.
Did you ask certain actors because they’re Thoreau fans?
Not necessarily, no. George didn’t know a whole lot about the subject, but did a stellar job and said he learned a lot. Same with Jeff Goldblum. I think Ted Danson had probably read some Thoreau and Emerson. But none of us are Thoreau scholars. I discovered him in 1968 — a lot of my generation was reading him then.
My dad is also who you’re describing. So I grew up loving Thoreau. He had a copy of “Walden” in his pick-up truck when I was a kid, and I’d thumb through it. So he was big for me growing up in the ’90s.
You know, Thoreau’s popularity waxes and wanes. He had a big resurgence back in the late ’60s. There was a big back-to-the-land movement. “Civil Disobedience” informed a lot of Vietnam protests, civil rights protests. Thoreau was having a renaissance in the late ’60s.
I’ve always thought of Concord transcendentalists as a bit like 1960s hippies in their own way. I like that the film called them America’s first youth movement.
Yeah, they were fairly young, all those great minds living in close proximity to one another in the Concord area — Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Margaret Fuller. Concord is probably the most historically rich community in this country, having also been the site of the beginning of the American Revolution.
There’s a quotation often attributed to Mark Twain: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” I think we’re seeing a lot of rhyming right now, in terms of civil disobedience, environmental destruction. We’re seeing the undoing of 50 years of environmental progress. We’re seeing the undoing of 65 years of progress in civil rights and social justice. So I think Thoreau’s time has come again. I hope people will pay attention to him.
Don Henley speaks about the “Henry David Thoreau” documentary to people gathered at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. – Richard Pasley
Paying attention is also a theme of Thoreau’s that you underscore in the film. Someone in the film pointed out his passage on autumn leaves in Massachusetts: that if every leaf on every tree turned fiery red just once, it would go down in history as something almost mythological. But it happens every year, so we don’t pay attention.
Thoreau was all about paying attention and what we pay attention to. He studied Eastern religions at Harvard, and there’s a lot of Buddhism in his philosophy about noticing, paying attention.
His relevancy also extends to the internet. In his time, the telegraph came into commercial use, and he warned: Improvements in communication technology do not necessarily equate to improvement in communications. I think the internet, social media, and AI have proven him right.
You know, we’re losing our attention spans. Somebody who teaches a film class told me his students can’t get through a whole film — they get disinterested. I’ve been told that young people have trouble getting through a book.
We’re in an attention span crisis. We’re living in the attention economy. Our attention has become a commodified resource that is extracted from us. A friend of mine calls it surveillance capitalism. [laughs]
[laughs] That’s good.
They suck all your information, and they use it. It’s a scary time, this whole AI thing — it’s the Wild West. There’s no regulation. In my lifetime, I’ve seen what corporations do when they’re not regulated: They don’t do the right thing.
The other thread is all these data centers being built use tremendous amounts of water, which goes back to Thoreau’s warning about technology. Technology and science are well and good. Medical science has saved my life. But there has to be some regulation.
We as Americans are so allergic to the idea of limits. We still have that frontier mentality where there’s plenty of everything, plenty of land, plenty of water, plenty of space. Just keep expanding and expanding. The fact is that we can’t. Unlimited growth is not possible. Cancer is also an unlimited growth, which devours its host.
That’s a great analogy.
People don’t like to hear the analogy that humankind is a cancer upon the face of the planet.
So you said you first read Thoreau in 1968. What made you pick him up?
My father fell ill in 1968 with acute arteriosclerosis [a heart condition]. He came home one day looking ill and said, “I’m going to have to sell my [auto parts] business. I can’t work anymore.” Which threw me and my mother for a loop.
I’m an only child. So I dropped out of college to help my mother. At that point, I was looking for solace. I grew up in a beautiful part of East Texas — forested, rolling hills, lakes and ponds. I spent a lot of my youth in nature.
There was a spiritual aspect to Thoreau that helped me cope with my father’s mortality and my own mortality, with living deliberately, living with purpose, trying to live every day to the fullest.
Annie Dillard said: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” It struck me — seeing my father fall ill — that my time on Earth was limited. The Buddhists say it’s not what happens to you, it’s how you react to it, and there’s a lot of that in Thoreau.
Every once in a while, I go out to Sleepy Hollow cemetery and sit by Henry’s grave and meditate. I’ve done that during some very difficult times in my life.
That must be moving.
It is. His simple tombstone and all the pencils people leave there — it’s very moving.
You still have a place in Texas?
I’m back and forth between Texas and California. I’m still working — I think this is my last year. I think I’ll retire next year. But my work helps fund the Walden Woods Project. [laughs] So I’m glad that I’ve been able to work for as long as I have.
[Laughs] You told me once that the Eagles song “The Last Resort” was inspired by Thoreau.
And a solo song, “Learn to be Still.” There’s that famous quote about just sitting in his doorway and watching the day unfold, and not doing anything. That’s hard to do now. [laughs] We’re all so screen-addicted. He said most men live lives of quiet desperation. That’s true to some degree.
I appreciate that the film addresses Thoreau as a man of contradictions. I remember a professor telling us, “Oh, he only lived at Walden a couple years, it was his friend’s land, his mom cooked for him, his parents ran a successful business.” But we don’t need him to be a hermit to be right.
Thoreau has his detractors. There are people who say: “Oh, he went home to his mother’s house every night for dinner; his sisters did his laundry.” That doesn’t matter. [laughs] That’s beside the point. Because he made Walden Woods into a symbol of American possibility.
What he wrote there — notes on the seasons, when certain plants would bloom and flower — those are now used to study climate change. So he’s not just some eccentric guy who spent a couple of years in a cabin. He’s an extremely important historical figure in the history of this nation.
On Monday, March 23, in Concord, 600 people attended a screening of the new Thoreau documentary followed by a panel discussion. – Richard Pasley
So how did you end up founding The Walden Woods Project? After you saw the news on CNN, you flew out to visit Concord in March 1990.
I flew to Boston with some friends, we drove to Concord and met with [Thoreau scholar] Tom Blanding and his colleagues. They took us on a walking trip through Walden Woods.
There was snow on the ground, it was icy, and my friends and I were not dressed for the occasion. [laughs] We crunched our way through Walden Woods. They showed us the proposed development site, and the spring where Thoreau would get his water, and his cabin site.
I went to Sen. Edward Kennedy’s office to try to enlist his help. He was very empathetic. I got a lot of support. But there was suspicion [from locals], understandably: What is some rock star who doesn’t even live here doing messing around in our backyard? I think now, after 36 years [laughs], we’ve proved we’re serious.
[laughs] Right.
So that’s really how it started. It’s one of those instances in life where you’re glad looking back that you didn’t know what you were getting into. Sort of like having kids or being in show business.
[laughs] What do you hope this film accomplishes?
My great hope is that the former Concord landfill will be put into permanent conservation, and the cleanup and restoration could begin. That’s a 35-acre landfill, and it is a crucial piece of the quilt of landscapes that comprises historic Walden Woods.
Our public lands are more endangered now than they have been in recent history. Walden Woods Project has preserved about 200 acres surrounding the state reservation. [Walden Woods itself] is a global symbol of environmental justice and social justice.
It’s true what you’re saying about Walden as a symbol.
People say: Walden Pond is just an ordinary pond; Walden Woods isn’t a pristine wilderness — timber there has been cut probably three or four times. But the fact that it is a common pond and a common wood are precisely the point.
E.L. Doctrow put it more eloquently than I ever could. He said: The fact that this is a humble place, an ordinary pond and a plain New England wood is exactly the point. Because Thoreau made himself an everyman. And he chose Walden as his everywhere.
Walden Pond. – BTS image courtesy of Erik Ewers
Doctrow said: There is a crucial connection of American clay and spirit here. If we neglect or deface or degrade Walden the place, we sever a connection to ourselves. If we destroy the place, we defame the author, we mock his vision, and we therefore tear up by the root the spiritual secret he found for us. We need both Waldens — the book and the place. We are not all spirit nor all clay. We are both. And so we need both: the book and the place.
That’s beautiful.
Walden is a symbolic place — like the Grand Canyon or the Mississippi River. We need to preserve our symbols. As Joseph Campbell said, “Everything is metaphor.”
Interview has been edited and condensed. Lauren Daley is a freelance culture writer. She can be reached at [email protected]. She tweets @laurendaley1, and Instagrams at @laurendaley1. Read more stories on Facebookhere.
Lauren Daley is a longtime culture journalist. As a regular contributor to Boston.com, she interviews A-list musicians, actors, authors and other major artists.
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