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[[image:HenryDavidThoreauGrave.jpg|thumb|right|Thoreau family headstone at Sleepy Hollow Cementery]]
Hailed as the first European-American [[environmentalist]], Thoreau wrote essays on autumnal foliage, the succession of forest trees, and the disperal of seeds, collected in [[Excursions]]. Scientists regard these works as anticipating [[ecology]], the study of interactions between species, places, and seasons. He was an early advocate of recreational hiking and canoeing, of conserving natural resources on private land, and of preserving wilderness as public land. Thoreau was also one of the first American supporters of [[Charles Darwin]]'s [[theory of evolution]].
Thoreau was not without his critics. Scottish author [[Robert Louis Stevenson]] wrote, "...Thoreau's content and ecstasy in living was, we may say, like a plant that he had watered and tended with womanish solicitude; for there is apt to be something unmanly, something almost dastardly, in a life that does not move with dash and freedom, and that fears the bracing contact of the world. In one word, Thoreau was a skulker. He did not wish virtue to go out of him among his fellow-men, but slunk into a corner to hoard it for himself. He left all for the sake of certain virtuous self-indulgences."
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