What does Thoreau say about a man keeping pace with his companions? This is an extremely important question about Thoreau's Walden Please...

was himself a
man who "marched to the beat of a different drummer."  For him, and for the other
Transcendentalists, individualism was of paramount important.  Another Transcendentalist, Ralph
Waldo Emerson reiterates this precept of individualism in his line,

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a
trail.

Like Emerson, Thoreau emphasized the importance of
nonconformity if one would be an individualist.  When he goes into the woods to live, as he
describes in , Thoreau observes that people who have fewer possessions have
more freedom because they are not bound to care for what they own.  Instead, they can travel
more easily, and need not worry about anything.

The individual may more
easily communicate with Nature, as well, intuitively experiencing it at his own pace.  In
Chapter 8, "The Village," Thoreau writes that he enjoyed a small amount of gossip, but
too much "numbed the soul."  On one visit to town, he was incarcerated for refusing to
pay taxes, protesting because of his position on slavery.