Most of us had to read Walden, or at least parts of it, in High School. At the time it was slow going, but a few years (cough, okay 20 years) later I find Thoreau's writing inspirational and prescient. He invented living off the grid, before there was even a grid!

Others are also rediscovering Thoreau, including climate researchers from Harvard and Boston University, who are using his detailed notes on the lifecycles of local plants to gauge the impact of weather changes on the environment.

Thoreau took detailed notes for a book on the seasons. Today climatologists are comparing the species in those notes to the current flora. The changes are pretty dramatic. Only 7 out of 21 species of orchid still exist in the Concord, MA, area. Twenty-seven percent of the species in his notes are completely gone, and another 36% are so sparse that they will probably disappear soon, too.

The silver lining, if there is one, is that this is being studied at all. Perhaps with the swell of attention to climate change will convince enough people to adjust their habits in time to save some of Thoreau's flowers.