During the time that Thoreau and his brother were conducting their academy, they went on a boat trip (1839) that was to provide the raw material which Thoreau would work into his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849). It was ten years between the actual river voyage and when his highly idealistic celebration of it was published. During that time, Thoreau read, wrote, and worked at whatever jobs he could find. He surveyed, made pencils with his father, and did odd jobs when he needed the money — thus leaving him plenty of time for his journal. In 1841, Thoreau moved into the Emerson household as the family's handyman. He made much use of Emerson's library, and a warm relationship grew between them as they daily conversed and as Thoreau began to submit poems and essays to the Dial, the transcendentalist journal that Emerson edited. (Most of these poems and essays were later included in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.) Emerson came to admire Thoreau so much that he allowed him to edit the entire April 1843 issue.
Emerson had high ambitions for his young friend and, in 1843, he arranged for Thoreau to stay with his brother, William Emerson, on Staten Island so that he might make contacts with New York publishers. Unfortunately, this attempt to find publication was a failure, and Thoreau soon returned to Concord and resumed work on his journal. Then in March 1845, he initiated what was to be the most significant event of his life: he borrowed an ax and began to construct a cabin on Emerson's land by the north shore of Walden Pond.
He moved into his cabin on July 4, 1845, and, as Walden indicates, he attempted to reduce his needs to the barest essentials of life and to establish an intimate, spiritual relationship with nature.
