Walden Outline - 4 (XI

Thoreau opens his exposition on hunting by threatening (not at all seriously) to seize and devour a raw, live woodchuck. The point is to remind us exactly what being a carnivore entails. We work to disguise our meat-eating, even as butchering and cooking serve to disguise our meat.
Thoreau discusses how hunting serves to introduce a child to nature; he suggests that the child should outgrow the desire to kill for the sake of killing but will not lose the appreciation for the natural world.
He suggests that most adults remain "young," in that fishermen expect to return with a long string of fish and often forget how pleasant a day at the pond, under whatever excuse, inherently proves.
He discusses his preference for vegetarian fare, suggesting some not quite healthy notions of diet on 1476.
His suggestions of natural intoxication and the desirability and pleasure of water as a beverage (1477) stands as rather more useful dietary advice.
At the bottom of 1477, Thoreau notes that it is one's attitude toward one's food, not the type of fare, that does the glutton make.
This leads to an exposition on our "animal" natures and the "animal in us."

Your editor notes that the dialogue at the opening is between Thoreau and William Ellery Channing the younger.
1481-82 discusses Thoreau's study of a woodland mouse.
Then we have birds in equally acute detail.
And, beginning on 1483, we find the often reprinted ant-battle. This is essential reading from Walden. Read for the parallels with human combat (both organized and not); read the piece as though reading of some human war as offered through the eyes of some alien being.
The rest of the chapter describes feral and semi-domestic cats, as well as native wood life.

A description of foraging for nuts and berries.
A meandering account of building a chimney and plastering his house, both necessary for the winter.
And reflections on wood-gathering, the presence of waste-wood in the forest, and the like.

Somewhat "snowed in," Thoreau devotes these early pages to reminding us that he is not in virgin forest. He discusses earlier occupants, and houses lost to fire.
Mention is made of how thoroughly evidence of the past is swallowed up by the woods.
Thoreau discusses his walks through the woods, and his two winter visitors -- one the young man he has regularly referred to as "the Poet," the other Bronson Alcott, to whom he devotes a couple complimentary paragraphs beginning on 1504.